Inclusive Open Charm Production in pp and Pb-Pb collisions with the ALICE Detector

ALICE is the dedicated heavy-ion experiment at the LHC. Its main physics goal is to study the properties of strongly-interacting matter at conditions of high energy density (>10 GeV/ fm^3) and high temperature (> 0.5 GeV) expected to be reached in central Pb-Pb collisions. Charm and beauty quarks are powerful tools to investigate this high density and strongly interacting state of matter since they are produced in initial hard scatterings that are therefore generated early in the system evolution and probe its hottest, densest stage. The measurement of the charm production cross sections in pp collisions provides an interesting insight into QCD processes and is crucial as a reference for heavy ion studies. We present open charm cross section measurements in pp collisions at \sqrt{s} = 7 TeV and \sqrt{s}=2.76 TeV in the central rapidity region. In addition, the first measurement of nuclear modification factor of D-meson in Pb-Pb collisions at \sqrt{s}= 2.76 TeV is shown.