Azimuthal angular correlations of heavy flavour decay electrons and charged hadrons in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV using the ALICE detector
Summary
Using measurements of the ALICE detector of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, the azimuthal angular correlation per trigger between electrons from semi-leptonic decay of heavy flavour mesons and charged hadrons is calculated.
By using Monte Carlo simulations to calculate the correlation distributions for electrons from D and B mesons, the relative beauty contribution to the heavy flavour electron decay spectra was measured. This measurement is compared to earlier performed measurements with the same method in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV and measurements with the impact parameter method at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. The results are in agreement with each other within the statistical and systematic errors. The measured values are also compared to FONLL calculations. An agreement within the uncertainties is found.
The near-side correlation strength was extracted by fitting a Gaussian on the near-side. This was then compared to central and semi-central Pb-Pb collisions at center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of sqrt(s_{NN}) = 2.76 TeV. The I_{AA} is the ratio of the yield of Pb-Pb and pp, and is measured to be around 1. This would mean that there is no suppression or enhancement in Pb-Pb collisions. But because of the large uncertainties in the Pb-Pb analysis it is hard to make strong statements about the modification of the yield in the QCD medium.