Quarkonia are very promising probes to study the quark-gluon plasma. The essential baseline
for measurements in heavy-ion collisions is high-precision data from proton-proton interactions.
However, the basic mechanisms of quarkonium hadroproduction are still being debated. The
most common models, the Color-Singlet Model, the non-relativistic QCD approach and the
Color-Evaporation Model, are able to describe most of the available cross-section data, despite
of their conceptual differences. New measures, such as the polarization, and data at a new
energy regime are crucial to test the competing models. Another issue is an eventual interplay
between the production process of a quarkonium state and the surrounding pp event. Current
Monte Carlo event generators treat the hard scattering independently from the rest of the
so-called underlying event. The investigation of possible correlations with the pp event might
be very valuable for a detailed understanding of the production processes.
ALICE ist the dedicated heavy-ion experiment at the LHC. Its design has been optimized for
high-precision measurements in very high track densities and down to low transverse momenta.
ALICE is composed of various different detectors at forward and at central rapidities. The most
important detectors for this study are the Inner Tracking System and the Time Projection
Chamber, allowing to reconstruct and identify electron candidate tracks within eta < 0.9. The
Transition Radiation Detector has not been utilized at this stage of the analysis; however, it
will strongly improve the particle identification and provide a dedicated trigger in the upcoming
beam periods. ...