Open Charm Production in pp and Heavy Ion Collisions in QCD

TL;DR

This paper compares RHIC charm production data with QCD-based predictions, highlighting discrepancies and discussing nuclear effects to improve understanding of charm quark production in proton-proton and heavy ion collisions.

Contribution

It evaluates the accuracy of kT-factorization, NLO QCD, and FONLL models against experimental data, emphasizing the need to consider nuclear effects.

Findings

Standard models underestimate charm production data.

Nuclear effects may play a significant role.

Further refinement of theoretical approaches is needed.

Abstract

The RHIC data on charm production are compared with the kT-factorization approach predictions, both standard NLO QCD and FONLL. The calculated results underestimate the STAR Collaboration data. The role of possible nuclear effects is discussed.