Heavy quarks as a key probe to the QGP properties

Abstract

This paper discusses selected highlights on open heavy-flavour production in pp and lead-lead collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Besides testing fundamental predictions from perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (pQCD), elementary proton-proton interactions serves as an important baseline for studies in heavy-ion collisions. QCD predicts that in such heavy-ion collisions the formation of a deconfined state of matter, the Quark Gluon Plasma, can be reached at high temperatures and high energy densities. Heavy quarks are powerful probes to investigate this state of matter, since they are predominantly produced in the initial hard scattering processes, interact with the coloured medium and carry this information to the final state.