Speaker
Alessandro Grelli
(University of Utrecht (NL))
Description
The properties of the hot and dense QCD medium formed in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions, as well as the mechanism of in-medium partonic energy loss, can be accessed via the measurement of the nuclear modification factor of particle production. The measurement of D meson production provides key tests of parton energy-loss models, which predict that charm quarks should experience less in-medium energy loss than light quarks and gluons.
The ALICE experiment has measured the production of prompt D0, D+ and D*+ mesons in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC at sqrt(s) = 7 and 2.76 TeV and at sqrt(s_{NN}) = 2.76 TeV, respectively, via the exclusive reconstruction of their hadronic decay. The p_t -differential production yields in the range 2 < pt < 16 GeV/c at central rapidity, |y| < 0.5, were used to calculate the nuclear modification factor. A suppression of a factor 3–4 for transverse momenta larger than 5 GeV/c in the 20% most central collisions was observed. The suppression is reduced in peripheral collisions.
Preliminary results in an extended p_t -range, using the data sample collected during the 2011 Pb-Pb run, will be shown.
Primary author
Collaboration ALICE
(Cern, Geneva, Switzerland)
Co-author
Alessandro Grelli
(University of Utrecht (NL))
