1. General Seminars

Elliptic azimuthal anisotropy of electrons from heavy-flavour decays in Pb-Pb collisions at ${\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$2.76 TeV measured by ALICE experiment

by Dr Denise Aparecida MOREIRA DE GODOY (University of Sao Paulo)

Europe/Rome
Auletta Leale (Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati)

Auletta Leale

Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati

Description
Heavy-ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies can achieve sufficiently high temperature and/or energy density to form the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). One of the most important probes for the QGP formation is the elliptic azimuthal anisotropy (v$_2$), which can be related to the collective motion due to the pressure gradient created in early stages of such collisions. In addition, heavy quarks (charm and bottom) serve as a sensitive probe for the QGP properties since they are produced in initial hard scatterings and interact with the deconfined medium. We present heavy-flavour electron v$_2$ in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV measured by the ALICE experiment at mid-rapidity. The heavy-flavour electron v$_2$ will be shown as a function of the transverse momentum of the decay electrons, which is sensitive to the properties of the QGP. A non-zero v$_2$ of low transverse momentum electrons from semi-leptonic decays of heavy flavours indicates a collective motion of the heavy quarks with respect to the bulk of the created matter. Whereas, the high transverse momentum v$_2$ is sensitive to the path length dependence of heavy-quark energy loss within the QGP.