Open Charm Analysis at Central Rapidity in ALICE using the first year of pp data at \sqrt{s}=7 TeV

Abstract

ALICE is the dedicated heavy-ion experiment at the LHC. Its main physics goal is to study the properties of the strongly-interacting matter in the conditions of high energy density (>10 GeV/fm3) and high temperature (> 0.3 GeV) expected to be reached in central Pb\^aPb collisions. Charm and beauty quarks are a powerful tool to investigate this high density and strongly interacting state of matter as they are produced in initial hard scatterings, and due to their long life time, they probe all the stages of the system evolution. The detector design was optimized for heavy ions but is also well suited for pp studies. ALICE recorded pp data at s= 7 TeV since march 2010 and the first run with heavy ion collisions took place in November 2010. The measurement of charm production cross section in pp collisions provides interesting insight into QCD processes and is important as a reference for heavy ion studies. The measurement of the D- meson yield in pp collisions can be used to extract the charm cross section. In this contribution, the ongoing study of reconstruction of D-mesons through hadronic decay channels and the first preliminary results obtained with \sqrt{s}= 7 TeV pp data will be presented.