The production of electrons from beauty-hadron decays was measured at midrapidity in proton-proton ($pp$) and central Pb-Pb collisions at center-of-mass energy per nucleon-nucleon pair $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV, using the ALICE detector at the LHC. The cross section measured in $pp$ collisions in the transverse momentum interval $2<p_{\mathrm{T}}<8\mathrm{GeV}/c$ was compared with models based on perturbative quantum chromodynamics calculations. The yield in the 10% most central Pb-Pb collisions, measured in the interval $2<p_{\mathrm{T}}<26\mathrm{GeV}/c$, was used to compute the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$, extrapolating the $pp$ reference cross section to $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ larger than 8 $\mathrm{GeV}/c$. The measured $R_{AA}$ shows significant suppression of the yield of electrons from beauty-hadron decays at high $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ and does not show a significant dependence above $8\mathrm{GeV}/c$ within uncertainties. The results are described by several theoretical models based on different implementations of the interaction of heavy quarks with a quark-gluon plasma, which predict a smaller energy loss for beauty quarks compared to light and charm quarks.

• Received 16 December 2022
• Accepted 25 July 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.108.034906

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