Elliptic flow of electrons from beauty-hadron decays in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV

Abstract

The elliptic flow of electrons from beauty hadron decays at midrapidity ($|y|$ $<$ 0.8) is measured in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV with the ALICE detector at the LHC. The azimuthal distribution of the particles produced in the collisions can be parameterized with a Fourier expansion, in which the second harmonic coefficient represents the elliptic flow, $v_2$. The $v_2$ coefficient of electrons from beauty-hadron decays is measured for the first time in the transverse momentum ($p_{\mathrm{T}}$) range 1.3-6 GeV/$c$ in the centrality class 30-50%. The measurement of electrons from beauty-hadron decays exploits their larger mean proper decay length $c\tau \approx$ 500 $\mu$m compared to that of charm hadrons and most of the other background sources. The $v_2$ of electrons from beauty hadron decays at midrapidity is found to be positive with a significance of 3.75$\sigma$. The results provide insights on the degree of thermalization of beauty quarks in the medium. A model assuming full thermalization of beauty quarks is strongly disfavoured by the measurement at high $p_{\mathrm{T}}$, but is in agreement with the results at low $p_{\mathrm{T}}$. Transport models including substantial interactions of beauty quarks with an expanding strongly-interacting medium describe the measurement.

19 pages, 2 captioned figures, authors from page 14, published version, figures at http://alice-publications.web.cern.ch/node/6225

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Cited by in corpus (14)

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• Probing charm quark dynamics via multiparticle correlations in PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=$ 5.02 TeV
• Towards the understanding of heavy quarks hadronization: from leptonic to heavy-ion collisions
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• Measurements of azimuthal anisotropies at forward and backward rapidity with muons in high-multiplicity p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=8.16$ TeV
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• Multiplicity dependence of charm baryon and charm meson production in pPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 8.16 TeV
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