Measurement of the B+/- meson nuclear modification factor in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 5.02 TeV

Understand

The differential production cross sections of B+/- mesons are measured via the exclusive decay channels B+/- to J/psi K+/- to mu+ mu- K+/- as a function of transverse momentum in pp and PbPb collisions at a center-of-mass energy sqrt(s[NN]) = 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair with the CMS detector at the LHC.

• The pp (PbPb) dataset used for this analysis corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 28.0 inverse picobarns (351 inverse microbarns).
• The measurement is performed in the B+/- meson transverse momentum range of 7 to 50 GeV/c, in the rapidity interval abs(y) < 2.4.
• In this kinematic range, a strong suppression of the production cross section by about a factor of two is observed in the PbPb system in comparison to the expectation from pp reference data.