Speaker
Description
Open heavy-flavor production studies at LHCb provide precise probes of
hadronization in collision systems ranging from $\gamma$Pb interactions to semi-central PbPb collisions. Studies of heavy baryons and mesons containing two different heavy or strange valence quarks probe the interplay of statistical hadronization, coalescence, and multi-parton interactions. From another point of view, the production of strange hadrons in high-energy collisions provides insight into hadronization, parton fragmentation, and nuclear effects. While strangeness enhancement has been linked to quark-gluon plasma formation in heavy-ion collisions, recent observations in small systems challenge conventional hadronization models. In this talk, recent results on open heavy-flavor and strangeness production from the LHCb experiment will be presented, providing new constraints on hadronization dynamics and nuclear effects in small systems.