Heavy flavour in ALICE

Open heavy flavours and heavy quarkonium states are expected to provide essential informa- tion on the properties of the strongly interacting system fo rmed in the early stages of heavy-ion collisions at very high energy density. Such probes are espe cially promising at LHC energies where heavy quarks (both c and b) are copiously produced. The ALICE detector shall measure the production of open heavy flavours and heavy quarkonium st ates in both proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. The expected performances of ALICE for heavy flavour physics is discussed based on the results of simulation studies on a s election of benchmark channels