Open heavy flavour production via semi-leptonic decay muons in Pb + Pb collisions at image with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of heavy quark production and suppression in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions probe the interactions of heavy quarks with the hot, dense medium created in the collisions. ATLAS has measured heavy quark production in image Pb + Pb collisions via semi-leptonic decays of open heavy flavour hadrons to muons. Results are presented for the per-event muon yield as a function of muon transverse momentum, image, over the range of image. The centrality dependence of the muon yields is characterized by the “central to peripheral” ratio, image. Using this measure, muon production from heavy quark decays is found to be suppressed by a centrality-dependent factor that increases smoothly from peripheral to central collisions. Muon production is suppressed by approximately a factor of two in central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Within the experimental errors, the observed suppression is independent of muon image for all centralities.