Disentangling cold nuclear matter effects through open heavy-flavour production in p-Pb and pp collisions

Data on open and hidden heavy-flavour production in high-energy heavy-ion collisions have traditionally been considered as a precious source of information regarding the onset of a Quark-Gluon-Plasma phase and its properties. A precise understanding of cold nuclear matter effects is however crucial to extract firm conclusions on many hot nuclear matter aspects. By means of a General-Mass Variable-Flavour-Number-Scheme framework capable of simulating both $pp$ and $pA$ collisions using, as far as possible, consistent input and undelying theoretical assumptions, we investigate up to which extent relevant theoretical uncertainties affecting the $pp$ case propagate to the $pA$ case and we critically revise the possibility that the data on open heavy-flavour production in $p$Pb collisions recently collected at the Large Hadron Collider, in conjunction with those in $pp$ collisions, can be used to infer accurate constraints on cold nuclear matter effects.