Inclusive heavy-flavour production at central and forward rapidity in Xe-Xe collisions at , √sNN=5.44 TeV

作者:Acharya, S.; Adamova, D.; Adler, A.; Adolfsson, J.; Rinella, G. Aglieri; Agnello, M.; Agrawal, N.; Ahammed, Z.; Ahmad, S.; Ahn, S. U.; Akbar, Z.; Akindinov, A.; Al-Turany, M.; Albuquerque, D. S. D.; Aleksandrov, D.; Alessandro, B.; Alfanda, H. M.; Alfaro Molina, R.; Ali, B.; Ali, Y.; Alici, A.; Alizadehvandchali, N.; Alkin, A.; Alme, J.; Alt, T.; Altenkamper, L.; Altsybeev, I; Anaam, M. N.; Andrei, C.; Andreou, D.; Andronic, A.; Angeletti, M.; Anguelov, V; Anticic, T.; Antinori, F.
来源:Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics , 2021, 819: 136437.
DOI:10.1016/j.physletb.2021.136437

摘要

The first measurements of the production of muons and electrons from heavy-flavour hadron decays in Xe-Xe collisions at root s(NN) = 5.44 TeV, using the ALICE detector at the LHC, are reported. The measurement of the nuclear modification factor RAA is performed as a function of transverse momentum pT in several centrality classes at forward rapidity (2.5 < y < 4) and midrapidity (vertical bar y vertical bar < 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 RAA of muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays is compared to previous measurements in Pb-Pb collisions at root sNN = 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-AA similar to 0.4 in the p(T) interval 4 < p(T) < 8 GeV/c, is observed. The comparison of the measured R-AA values in the two collision systems brings new insights on the properties of the quark-gluon plasma by investigating the system-size and geometry dependence of medium-induced parton energy loss. The results of muons and electrons from heavy-flavour hadron decays provide new constraints to model calculations.