Bochum 2009 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Hadronen und Kerne

HK 68: Heavy Ion Collisions and QCD phases

HK 68.5: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2009, 17:45–18:00, H-ZO 10

Heavy flavor electrons in pp collisions at 10 TeV with ALICE — •Raphaelle Bailhache¹ and Hongyan Yang² — ¹Institut für Kernphysik, Universität Frankfurt, Germany — ²Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Germany

In nucleus-nucleus collisions, the formation time of heavy quarks (charm and beauty) is approximately 1/M_Q (0,1 fm/c for c and 0,02 fm/c for b), much smaller than the expected lifetime of the QGP at LHC (about 10 fm/c). Therefore heavy quarks are uniquely suited to probe the QGP over its whole lifetime. The cc and bb production in pp collisions serves as an important baseline for the nucleus-nucleus studies and allows to test pQCD calculations. The cross-sections can be measured indirectly with semi-electronic decays of heavy flavor hadrons. Compared to the direct measurements of heavy flavor hadrons via their hadronic decay channels the large branching ratios are an advantage. We present the expected performance of the measurement of the electrons from heavy-quark decays in pp collisions at 10 TeV with the first data planned to be collected at LHC in 2009 with the ALICE detector. Electrons are identified using both the Time Projection Chamber and the Transition Radiation Detector. The good resolution of the Inner Tracking System allows one to select electrons from B meson decays. The electron background, mainly from photon conversion and Dalitz decays of neutral light mesons, is also investigated.