Characterising the QGP with heavy flavour hadrons with ALICE: state of the art and prospects

A transition to a phase of matter made of deconfined quarks and gluons, called the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), occurs in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. Heavy-flavour quarks (charm and beauty), because of their large mass, are mainly produced through hard scattering processes, on a shorter timescale with respect to the formation time of the QGP. Therefore, heavy quarks carry information about the different evolution aspects of heavy-ion collisions: initial conditions, QGP properties, hadronization mechanisms, and the rescattering in hadronic phase. In this contribution, a focus on the heavy-flavour measurements performed by the ALICE Collaboration that probe the properties and dynamics of the QGP is given. A summary on the state of the art of the characterisation of QGP properties with heavy-flavour hadrons and the prospects with ALICE upgrades are presented.