Probing the QGP with heavy flavour hadrons with ALICE: state of the art and future upgrades

by Marianna Mazzilli (University of Houston / CERN ALICE / Wigner RCP)

Monday 17 Jul 2023, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Budapest

Médiaterem és zoom (2. épület)

Heavy quarks (charm and beauty) are valuable probes for investigating the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formed in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions, as they are mainly produced through hard-scattering processes prior to the formation of the QGP, and their number is conserved during the subsequent QGP evolution. Measurements of the nuclear modification factor $R_{\rm AA}$ of charm and beauty hadrons allow the characterisation of the in-medium energy loss of heavy quarks while traversing the QGP. Information on their diffusion and degree of participation in the medium collective motion can be obtained by measuring the elliptic-flow coefficient $v_2$ of heavy-
flavour particles.

ALICE has planned several upgrades that will enable novel studies of the quark-gluon plasma. The main new studies in the QGP sector rely on a rich heavy flavour program. In particular, low-$p_T$ heavy-flavour production, including beauty hadrons, multi-charm baryons and charm-charm correlations, as well as on precise multi-differential measurements of dielectron emission to probe the mechanism of the time-evolution of the QGP temperature.

In this talk, the latest heavy flavour measurements that probe the QGP properties with the ALICE detector will be presented. In view of a better understanding of the in-medium heavy-quark dynamics, the reported ALICE measurements will be compared to predictions from models including different implementations of heavy-quark interaction and hadronisation with the QGP constituents. The presentation will also cover the physics performance expected with the next ALICE upgrades (foreseen for Run 4 and Run 5).

 

Zoom: https://cern.zoom.us/j/67590004845?pwd=TmhMaVpCOFhQZ3RCRUJwVUVMSFV0dz09

Meeting ID: 675 9000 4845
Passcode: 344007