Speaker
Description
High-energy heavy-ion collisions produce a state of strongly-interacting matter characterised by high energy density and temperature. In these extreme conditions, according to quantum chromodynamics (QCD) calculations on the lattice, matter undergoes a phase transition to a quark--gluon plasma (QGP) state in which quarks and gluons are deconfined.
The production of strange quarks in heavy--ion collisions is enhanced with respect to other light-flavoured quarks compared to proton--proton collisions. Thus also the production via coalescence of charm and beauty hadrons with strange-quark content is expected to be enhanced with respect to the one of non-strange hadrons in case of hadronisation of heavy quarks via recombination with the light quarks in the medium. In this scenario, measurements of $\mathrm{D}_s^+$ mesons originating from the hadronisation of a charm quark (prompt) and from beauty-hadron decays (non-prompt) offer a unique tool to study the hadronisation mechanism of both charm and beauty quarks in the quark--gluon plasma.
In particular, the production of non-prompt $\mathrm{D}_s^+$ mesons allows the study of the hadronisation of beauty quarks since about half of them originate from $\mathrm{B}_s^0$-meson decays. This makes the non-prompt $\mathrm{D}_s^+$ mesons a sensitive probe to the enhancement of beauty-strange meson production.
In this contribution, the latest results of the ALICE Collaboration on the production of non-prompt $\mathrm{D}_s^+$ mesons in pp and Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}=5.02$~TeV with Machine-Learning techniques will be presented. Indeed, these measurements could provide important information about the hadronisation of heavy quarks to strange heavy-flavour hadrons relative to that of heavy-flavour hadrons without strange-quark content.
Furthermore, the first measurement of non-prompt $\mathrm{D}_s^+$ nuclear modification factor ($R_\mathrm{AA}$) in Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}=5.02$~TeV will be presented and compared to the one of prompt $\mathrm{D}_s^+$ and non-prompt $\mathrm{D}^0$ mesons.
Finally, the expected performance for the measurement of non-prompt $\mathrm{D}_s^+$ mesons with ALICE in the LHC Run 3 and 4 will be presented.
| First author | Stefano Politanò |
|---|---|
| stefano.politano@cern.ch | |
| Collaboration / Activity | ALICE Collaboration |
