Speaker
Description
Heavy quarks (charm and beauty) are unique probes for studies of the properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) formed in high-energy Pb--Pb collisions, since they are almost exclusively produced in hard scattering processes in the initial stages of the collision and thus experience the full evolution of the QGP.
In order to distinguish the effects of the QGP from possible Cold Nuclear Matter (CNM) effects, such as shadowing, $k_{\rm{T}}$ broadening and initial-state energy loss, comparisons are made between results in p--Pb and Pb--Pb which are both studied with respect to pp collisions. Measurements in pp collisions do not only provide a reference p--Pb and Pb--Pb measurements, but also constitute as an excellent test of next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations in the TeV energy regime.
Furthermore, studies of heavy-flavour production as a function of charged-particle multiplicity in small systems shed light on the possible presence of collective effects at high multiplicities in such systems, as well as on the dependence of CNM effects on the collision geometry.
The ALICE detector at the LHC studies open heavy-flavour production at mid-rapidity via hadronic and semi-electronic decays, and via semi-muonic decays at forward rapidity. In this contribution, we will present recent results on heavy-flavour production in pp, p--Pb and Pb--Pb collisions with ALICE.
