Speaker
Description
Heavy quarks, i.e. charm and beauty, are formed on a shorter time scale with respect to the strongly-interacting matter produced in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Therefore, they are sensitive probes to study the mechanisms of parton energy loss, hadronisation and thermalization in the hot and dense state of matter.
The heavy-flavour nuclear modification factor ($R_{\rm AA}$) and the elliptic flow ($v_{2}$) are two of the main experimental observables that allow us to investigate the interaction strength of heavy quarks with the expanding medium.
$R_{\rm AA}$ accounts for the modification of heavy-flavour hadron yields in Pb--Pb collisions with respect to pp collisions, after the proper binary collision scaling is applied on the latter system. The comparison of the $R_{\rm AA}$ of charm, beauty and light-flavour hadrons can provide information about the colour-charge and parton-mass dependence of the parton energy loss.
At low $p_{\rm{T}}$ the $v_{2}$ is expected to bring insights into the degree of thermalization of heavy quarks in the deconfined medium, and at high $p_{\rm{T}}$ it carries information on the path-length dependence of in-medium parton energy loss.
In this talk, the $R_{\rm AA}$ and the $v_{2}$ of open heavy-flavour hadrons via their hadronic and semi-leptonic decays to electrons at mid-rapidity and to muons at forward rapidity in Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}$ = 2.76 TeV will be discussed. Progress on the study of the $R_{\rm AA}$ of electrons from heavy-flavour and beauty-hadron decays will be also discussed. Comparisons with model calculations including the interaction of heavy quarks with the hot, dense, and deconfined medium will be discussed.
| Presentation type | Oral |
|---|
