Feasibility study for the detection of $D^{0} \to K^{-}\pi^{+}$ decays in Pb-Pb collisions at LHC with ALICE

The ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC collider is devoted to the study of heavy-ion collisions at a centre of mass energy of 5.5 TeV per nucleon. The study of open charm production in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC allows investigation of the mechanisms of heavy quark production and energy loss in the hot and dense medium formed in the early stage of the collision. In addition, the open charm production cross section is the natural normalization for the study of J/ psi production. The reconstruction of exclusive hadronic decays of charm particles is the only way to obtain a direct measurement of their transverse momentum distribution. We present the results of a feasibility study for the detection of D/sup 0/ to K/sup -/ pi /sup + / decays in Pb-Pb collisions with ALICE. (26 refs).