Speaker
Description
Heavy-flavour (beauty and charm) quarks are produced almost
exclusively in initial hard processes, and their yields remain largely
unchanged throughout a heavy-ion reaction.
Nevertheless, they interact with the nuclear matter in all the stages of
its evolution. Thus, heavy quarks serve as ideal self-generated
penetrating probes of the strongly interacting Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP).
Complementary measurements of the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ and
the azimuthal anisotropy parameter $v_2$, compared to different model
calculations, reveal the properties of heavy quark transport, provide
information about energy loss mechanisms and also about the
participation of heavy quarks in the collective motion within the QGP.
Recent $R_{AA}$ and $v_2$ measurements of D mesons and heavy-flavour hadron
decay electrons at mid-rapidity, as well as heavy-flavour hadron decay
muons at forward rapidity, will be overviewed in this talk, including
Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$=2.76 TeV and new preliminary results at
$\sqrt{s}$=5.02 TeV from the Run-2 phase.
