Suppression of high transverse momentum D mesons in central Pb-Pb collisions at \( \sqrt{{{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}}}=2.76\;\mathrm{TeV} \)

The production of the prompt charm mesons D0, D+, D*+, and their antiparticles, was measured with the ALICE detector in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, at a centre-of-mass energy $ \sqrt{{{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}}}=2.76\;\mathrm{TeV} $ per nucleon-nucleon collision. The p t-differential production yields in the range 2 < p t < 16 GeV/c at central rapidity, |y| < 0.5, were used to calculate the nuclear modification factor R AA with respect to a proton-proton reference obtained from the cross section measured at $ \sqrt{s}=7\;\mathrm{TeV} $ and scaled to $ \sqrt{s}=2.76\;\mathrm{TeV} $ . For the three meson species, R AA shows a suppression by a factor 3–4, for transverse momenta larger than 5 GeV/c in the 20% most central collisions. The suppression is reduced for peripheral collisions.