Charm fragmentation and excited charm and charm-strange mesons at ZEUS

TL;DR

This paper measures charm fragmentation in photoproduction, studies excited charm and charm-strange mesons, and compares results with previous data and theoretical models, enhancing understanding of charm quark hadronization.

Contribution

It provides new measurements of charm fragmentation functions and excited charm mesons, including a search for radially excited states, using ZEUS data.

Findings

Charm fragmentation function measured in photoproduction.

Parameters of fragmentation models extracted.

Observation and analysis of excited charm and charm-strange mesons.

Abstract

The charm fragmentation function has been measured in photoproduction of jets containing D^*+- mesons. The measured function has been used to extract free parameters of different fragmentation models. Measurements of excited charm, D_1(2420)^0 and D_2^*(2460)^0, and charm-strange, D_{s1}(2536)^+-, mesons and a search for the radially excited charm meson, D^{*'}(2640)^+-, were also performed. The results are compared with those measured previously and with theoretical expectation.