Single muon production as a function of charged-particle multiplicity in proton-proton collisions at 8 TeV with ALICE at the LHC
At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is a general purpose heavy-ion detector. ALICE is also studying proton-proton collisions, both as a reference for lead-lead and proton-lead collisions, and in physics areas where ALICE is competitive with other LHC experiments. Heavy flavours (charmand beauty quarks) are formed in the initial stages of the collision through gluon fusion, which is a dominant process at the LHC. The study of heavy flavour production in proton-proton collisions at the LHC, provides an important test of perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (pQCD) calculations, particularly in the forward rapidity of ALICE (-4 < ´ < -2.5), where their production is expected to be sensitive to small gluon Bjorken-x values, in parton distribution functions (PDF). In addition, the investigation of heavy flavour production in proton-proton collisions, also constitutes an essential baseline for the corresponding measurements in heavy ion collisions. In this study, the production of heavy flavours is measured via the contribution of their muonic decay to the inclusive pT -differential muon yield, as a function of relative charged particle multiplicity, reconstructed in proton-proton collisions at 8 TeV.
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