New vistas in charm production

¹ Institute of Nuclear Physics PAN, Kraków, Poland
² Rzeszów University, Rzeszów, Poland

^* e-mail: ifj.edu.pl

Published online: 19 April 2019

Abstract

We discuss some new aspects of charm production trigerred by recent observations of the LHCb collaboration. The LHCb collaboration measured small asymmetries in production of D⁺D⁻mesons as well as $D_s^{+}{D}_s^{-}$ mesons. Is this related to initial quark/antiquark asymmetries in the proton ? Here we discuss a scenario in which unfavored fragmentations $q/\overline{q}\to D$ and $s/\overline{s}\to D_s$ are responsible for the asymmetries. We fix the strength of such fragmentations – transition probabilities, by adjusting to the size of the LHCb asymmetries. This has consequences for production of D mesons in forward directions (large x_F ) as well as at low energies. Large asymmetries are predicted then in these regions. We present here some of our predictions. Consequences for high-energy neutrino production in the atmosphere are discussed and quantified. The production of Λ_c baryon at the LHC is disussed. Large deviations from the independent-parton fragmentation picture are found.