IntroductionThe LHC heavy ion physics program aims at investigating the properties of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy density where the formation of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) is expected [1]. Among the most promising observables, heavy quarkonium states are especially relevant since they provide, via their leptonic decays, an essential probe of the earliest and hottest stages of heavy ion collisions. From the early predictions of charmonium suppression by Debye screening in a deconfined medium [2] to the recent results from the NA50 collaboration [3], a lot of effort has been devoted to the subject (for reviews see [4,5]). The LHC energy is ideal for a spectroscopy of the whole set of resonances. In particular, because a much higher temperature than that expected to be reached at RHIC is needed to dissolve the Υ meson, the spectroscopy of the Υ family at LHC energies should reveal an unique set of information on the characteristics of the QGP [6]. On the other hand, the study of heavy quark resonances at the LHC is subject to significant differences with respect to the SPS energies. First of all the signals will be sitting on top of a complex combinatorial background, mainly coming from open charm and open bottom decay [7]. Then, in addition to prompt charmonia produced "directly" via hard scattering, secondary charmonia can be produced from bottom decay [8], DD annihilation [9, 10] and statistical hadronization [11,12,13]. Furthermore, the SPS results have demonstrated that the study of onium suppression must be closely joined to the study of open heavy flavours because both open and hidden quarkonia arise from the same underlying production mechanism. Although it is commonly admitted that, at the LHC, a large production rate of cc and bb pairs is expected 1 , the present estimations for heavy flavour production in nucleon-nucleon collisions are subject to some 1 Up to 115 cc and 5 bb should to be produced per central (5% of the total cross-section) PbPb collision [14].