Suppression of high transverse momentum D mesons in central Pb-Pb collisions at √sNN=2.76\;TeV

A bstract The production of the prompt charm mesons D 0 , D + , D* + , and their antiparticles, was measured with the ALICE detector in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, at a centre-of-mass energy √sNN=2.76\;TeV per nucleon-nucleon collision. The p t -differential production yields in the range 2 < p t < 16 GeV/ c at central rapidity, | y | < 0.5, were used to calculate the nuclear modification factor R AA with respect to a proton-proton reference obtained from the cross section measured at √s=7\;TeV and scaled to √s=2.76\;TeV . For the three meson species, R AA shows a suppression by a factor 3–4, for transverse momenta larger than 5 GeV/ c in the 20% most central collisions. The suppression is reduced for peripheral collisions.