Differential measurements of heavy flavours via the semi-muonic decay channel at ALICE using Monte Carlo simulations

Abstract

Heavy quarks (charm and bottom/beauty quarks), produced during the early stages of high-energy particle collisions with high momentum transfer and short formation time, provide unique probes for studying both the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and the internal structure of protons due to their flavour conservation in strong interactions. Proton- proton collisions at ultra-relavistic energies serve as essential baseline measurements for studying quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and establishing references for more complex nucleus-nucleus collision systems. This thesis employs Monte Carlo simulations to investigate heavy-quark production via their hadronisation into open heavy-flavour hadrons, which subsequently decay via the semi-muonic channel, in proton-proton (pp) collisions at the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Detailed comparisons of inclusive single muon dif- ferential cross-sections and heavy-flavour decay muon di!erential cross-sections at centre- of-mass energies of →s = 5.02 TeV and →s = 13 TeV, at forward pseudorapidity (↑4 ↓ ω ↓ ↑2.5), are presented. The study encompasses systematic comparisons between stan- dalone PYTHIA 8 simulations and integrated simulations that incorporate PYTHIA and GEANT3 to describe ALICE detector transport. Additionally, this work investigates the impact of di!erent parton distribution functions (PDFs), specifically NNPDF2.3 and CTEQ6.6M, on the simulated yields. The results are analysed in terms of transverse momentum (pT) di!erential cross-sections (dε/dpT), with particular focus on the normalised yields (1/Nevt ↔ dN/dpT) as a function of pT. The Monte Carlo simulation calculations are ultimately compared with experimen- tal data from ALICE Run 2 (2015-2018) and theoretical perturbative QCD predictions from Fixed-Order Next-to-Leading-Logarithm (FONLL) calculations, providing insights into the accuracy of current theoretical frameworks and simulation tools in describing heavy-quark production at LHC energies.