Open heavy-flavor production in proton-proton collisions at the LHC with ALICE

ALICE is the LHC experiment dedicated to the study of the Quark- Gluon Plasma (QGP) formed in high-energy collisions of lead nuclei. Heavy quarks are sensitive probes of the QGP, since their interactions with the deconfined medium are expected to provide crucial information about its properties. They experience the full collision history and they are expected to be abundantly produced at the LHC. Finally, the understanding of heavy-flavor production in proton-proton collisions is an important test of perturbative QCD calculations, and is an essential reference to interpret the heavy ion results. We report measurements by ALICE of heavy quark production at central and forward rapidity in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV, via the reconstruction of open charm particles, both exclusively, using a selection of hadronic decay channels, and inclusively, using single leptons. We present cross section measurements of D mesons, electrons and muons from heavy-quark decays in pp collisions.