Heavy flavour production at LHC
arXiv:0909.4769
Abstract
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will open a new era in high energy physics. The expected large cross section for heavy flavour production in proton-proton collisions at = 14 TeV will allow detailed studies of the production mechanisms and an extensive test of Quantum Chromodynamics. Since charm and beauty has been proposed as a good probe to study hot and dense QCD matter, the understanding of the production mechanisms in elementary proton-proton collisions is of primary importance as a reference for studies in heavy-ion collisions. In the early phase of LHC operation the experiments will focus on the investigation of the heavy flavour production mechanisms.
7 pages, 10 figures. Invited overview talk presented at the Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics, Krakow, Poland, 16-22 July 2009. Proceedings to be published in Proceedings of Science