Charm jet production and properties in pp, p-Pb, and PbPb collisions measured with ALICE at the LHC
Résumé
In Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, a hot and dense medium of deconfined quarks and gluons is
formed (Quark-Gluon Plasma, QGP).
The QGP is conjectured to be the state of matter of the early Universe up to few microseconds
after the Big Bang and may still exist in the core of neutron stars. One of the most striking
signatures of the QGP formation in heavy-ion collisions is the suppression of jet production.
This phenomenon, called jet quenching, is ascribed to the energy lost by the initial parton while
traveling through the QGP medium.
Heavy quarks lose energy via subsequent elastic scatterings with the medium constituents, and/or
through gluon radiation. Theoretical models predict that energy loss depends on the color charge
and mass of the hard-scattered parton traversing the medium. Such mass dependence can be
studied by measuring the production of hadrons and jets containing heavy-quarks in pp, p-Pb
and Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC.
In this contribution we will present the measurements of c-jet production in pp, p-Pb and Pb-Pb
collisions performed with the ALICE detector at the LHC. The results obtained with pp and p-Pb
data will be compared with predictions from event generators. Charm jets are tagged by requiring
the presence of a D meson among its constituents. Thanks to the exclusive reconstruction of
D-meson hadronic decay channels, the measurement of the jet-momentum fraction carried by the
D meson is possible. This provides useful information to investigate charm fragmentation and
production processes. The prospects for measuring b-jet production with ALICE will be also
discussed