Thesis

A few microseconds after the Big Bang, the Universe was filled with a quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a hot and dense state of matter described by Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory of the strong interaction. Collisions of heavy ions at the LHC recreate this state in the laboratory. Heavy quarks (charm and beauty) are produced at the very start of the collision and probe the QGP throughout its evolution. In this PhD you will measure the production of prompt and non-prompt J/? mesons, which are bound states of a charm quark and a charm antiquark. Prompt J/? are produced in the collision itself, while non-prompt J/? come from the decay of beauty hadrons. You will measure their nuclear modification factor and their elliptic flow. These tell us how the QGP suppresses and regenerates J/?, and whether heavy quarks thermalise in the medium. You will use the 2022-2026 data of the ALICE experiment, starting with O-O collisions and possibly extending to Pb-Pb. You will also improve the matching between tracks of the MFT silicon tracker and of the muon spectrometer using machine learning. You will gain expertise in data analysis, simulation, grid computing and machine learning within an international collaboration.