Background subtraction for open heavy flavour studies in proton-proton collisions at √(s) = 7 TeV with the ALICE Muon Spectrometer

With ultrarelativistic high energy heavy-ion collisions it is possible to reproduce, during a short time, the Quark Gluon Plasma: a dense and hot matter that existed in the early universe some microseconds after the big bang. Among the experiments at the LHC, ALICE is the only one that was designed and built to study heavy ion collisions. The muon spectrometer of the ALICE experiment studies open heavy flavours, quarkonium and low mass resonance through their semileptonic and leptonic decay into single muons and dimuons. The present report focuses on the study of open heavy flavours in proton- proton collisions as they can be used to test perturbative QCD calculations but also as a reference in Pb-Pb collision measurements. The first chapter introduces basic concepts of heavy ion collisions and open heavy flavour production in proton proton collisions. The second chapter contains a description of the ALICE experiment and the muon spectrometer. Chapter three describes the method used to extract the single muon distribution coming from open heavy flavours and the associated systematic uncertainties to the background subtraction. Finally, chapter four is a summary of the most important results obtained. (author)