Inclusive heavy-flavour production at central and forward rapidity in Xe-Xe collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.44$ TeV

Abstract

The first measurements of the production of muons and electrons from heavy-flavour hadron decays in Xe-Xe collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.44 TeV, using the ALICE detector at the LHC, are reported. The measurement of the nuclear modification factor $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$ is performed as a function of transverse momentum $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ in several centrality classes at forward rapidity ($2.5<y<4$) and midrapidity ($|y|<0.8$) for muons and electrons from heavy-flavour hadron decays, respectively. A suppression by a factor up to about 2.5 compared to the binary-scaled pp reference is observed in central collisions at both central and forward rapidities. The $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$ of muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays is compared to previous measurements in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV. When the nuclear modification factors are compared in the centrality classes 0-10% for Xe-Xe collisions and 10-20% for Pb-Pb collisions, which have similar charged-particle multiplicity density, a similar suppression, with $R_{\mathrm{AA}}\sim 0.4$ in the $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ interval $4<p_{\mathrm{T}}<8$ GeV/$c$, is observed. The comparison of the measured $R_{\mathrm{AA}}$ values in the two collision systems brings new insights on the properties of the quark-gluon plasma by investigating the system-size and path-length dependence of medium-induced parton energy loss. The results of muons and electrons from heavy-flavour hadron decays provide new constraints to model calculations.

27 pages, 4 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 22, published version, figures at http://alice-publications.web.cern.ch/node/6718

References in corpus (12)

• PYTHIA 6.4 Physics and Manual
• An Introduction to PYTHIA 8.2
• Glauber Modeling in High Energy Nuclear Collisions
• The equation of state in (2+1)-flavor QCD
• Results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
• Measurement of prompt D-meson production in p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV
• Measurement of the pseudorapidity and centrality dependence of the transverse energy density in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV
• Measurement of electrons from semileptonic heavy-flavor hadron decays in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=2.76$ TeV
• Reference heavy flavour cross sections in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV, using a pQCD-driven sqrt(s)-scaling of ALICE measurements at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
• Quarkonium production in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions: suppression vs. enhancement
• Heavy-flavor production in heavy-ion collisions and implications for the properties of hot QCD matter
• Production of muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays at high transverse momentum in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ and 2.76 TeV

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Properties of the QCD Matter: A Review of Selected Results from the ALICE Experiment
• Azimuthal correlations of heavy-flavor hadron decay electrons with charged particles in pp and p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV
• Production of Strange and Charm Hadrons in Pb+Pb Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 5.02 TeV
• Production of leptons from decay of heavy-flavor hadrons in high-energy nuclear collisions