Neutral meson production in p-Pb collisions with ALICE at the LHC

Abstract

Strong suppression of high pT π0 has been observed in heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies, which can be interpreted by involving various transport properties of the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) medium and initial state effects. Comparing particle production in pp, p-A, A-A reactions has frequently been used to separate initial state effects of colliding nuclei from final state effects in quark matter created by the collisions. We have measured π0 and η meson emitted in p-Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV via complementary methods, using the ALICE electromagnetic calorimeters, PHOS and EMCal, and Photon Conversion Method (PCM), which identifies photons converted to e+e− pairs in the material of the ALICE inner detectors, TPC and ITS. In this paper, π0 and η meson spectra in p-Pb collisions as well as the nuclear modification factor for π0 (Rπ0 p-Pb) will be shown.