Study of High Mass Dimuon Production in Pb-Pb Collisions with CMS

High invariant mass ( M > 10 GeV/c**2) muon pair production in Pb-Pb collisions at LHC with CMS detector is studied. Various sources of dimuons are included in the analysis. It is estimated that for two weeks of running time about 11000 events of Z decays can be detected with a background lower than 5%. It is also shown that if the energy losses of heavy quarks in dense matter are not taken into account, open b quark pair fragmentation is the dominant source of opposite-sign muon pairs in the invariant mass interval10 GeV/c**2 < M < 70 GeV/c**2. Hence, the measurement of the dimuon yield in this mass range can be seen as an indirect measurement of the energy loss of bottom quarks in dense medium.