The production of ϒ mesons in Pb–Pb collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair sNN=5.02 TeV is measured with the muon spectrometer of the ALICE detector at the LHC. The yields as well as the nuclear modification factors are determined in the forward rapidity region 2.5

Measurements of the production of muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays in Pb–Pb collisions at sNN=5.02 and 2.76 TeV using the ALICE detector at the LHC are reported. The nuclear modification factor RAA at sNN=5.02 TeV is measured at forward rapidity (2.57 GeV/c). The RAA shows an increase of the suppression of the yields of muons from heavy-flavour hadron decays with increasing centrality. A suppression by a factor of about three is observed in the 10% most central collisions. The RAA at sNN=5.02 TeV is similar to that at sNN=2.76 TeV. The precise RAA measurements have the potential to distinguish between model predictions implementing different mechanisms of parton energy loss in the high-density medium formed in heavy-ion collisions. They place important constraints for the understanding of the heavy-quark interaction with the hot and dense QCD medium.

Jet fragmentation transverse momentum (jT) distributions are measured in proton-proton (pp) and proton-lead (p-Pb) collisions at sNN = 5.02 TeV with the ALICE experiment at the LHC. Jets are reconstructed with the ALICE tracking detectors and electromagnetic calorimeter using the anti-kT algorithm with resolution parameter R = 0.4 in the pseudorapidity range |η| < 0.25. The jT values are calculated for charged particles inside a fixed cone with a radius R = 0.4 around the reconstructed jet axis. The measured jT distributions are compared with a variety of parton-shower models. Herwig and Pythia 8 based models describe the data well for the higher jT region, while they underestimate the lower jT region. The jT distributions are further characterised by fitting them with a function composed of an inverse gamma function for higher jT values (called the “wide component”), related to the perturbative component of the fragmentation process, and with a Gaussian for lower jT values (called the “narrow component”), predominantly connected to the hadronisation process. The width of the Gaussian has only a weak dependence on jet transverse momentum, while that of the inverse gamma function increases with increasing jet transverse momentum. For the narrow component, the measured trends are successfully described by all models except for Herwig. For the wide component, Herwig and PYTHIA 8 based models slightly underestimate the data for the higher jet transverse momentum region. These measurements set constraints on models of jet fragmentation and hadronisation. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]