Measurement of the production of charm jets tagged with D$^{0}$ mesons in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$= 7 TeV

TL;DR

This paper measures charm jet production tagged with D0 mesons in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV using the ALICE detector, providing insights into charm quark fragmentation and testing QCD models.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed measurement of D0-tagged charm jets at the LHC, comparing results with various Monte Carlo generators and NLO QCD calculations.

Findings

Fraction of charm jets increases with jet transverse momentum.

Distribution of D0 meson momentum fraction within jets is characterized.

Results are consistent with certain Monte Carlo models and NLO QCD predictions.

Abstract

The production of charm jets in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV was measured with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is based on a data sample corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of $6.23$ ${\rm nb}^{-1}$, collected using a minimum-bias trigger. Charm jets are identified by the presence of a D$^0$ meson among their constituents. The D$^0$ mesons are reconstructed from their hadronic decay D$^0\rightarrow$K$^{-}\pi^{+}$. The D$^0$-meson tagged jets are reconstructed using tracks of charged particles (track-based jets) with the anti-$k_{\mathrm{T}}$ algorithm in the jet transverse momentum range $5<p_{\rm{T,jet}}^{\mathrm{ch}}<30$ ${\rm GeV/}c$ and pseudorapidity $|\eta_{\rm jet}|<0.5$. The fraction of charged jets containing a D$^0$-meson increases with $p_{\rm{T,jet}}^{\rm{ch}}$ from $0.042 \pm 0.004\, \mathrm{(stat)} \pm 0.006\, \mathrm{(syst)}$ to $0.080 \pm 0.009\, \rm{(stat)} \pm 0.008\, \rm{(syst)}$. The distribution of D$^0$-meson tagged jets as a function of the jet momentum fraction carried by the D$^0$ meson in the direction of the jet axis ($z_{||}^{\mathrm{ch}}$) is reported for two ranges of jet transverse momenta, $5<p_{\rm{T,jet}}^{\rm{ch}}<15$ ${\rm GeV/}c$ and $15<p_{\rm{T,jet}}^{\rm{ch}}<30$ ${\rm GeV/}c$ in the intervals $0.2<z_{||}^{\rm{ch}}<1.0$ and $0.4<z_{||}^{\rm{ch}}<1.0$, respectively. The data are compared with results from Monte Carlo event generators (PYTHIA 6, PYTHIA 8 and Herwig 7) and with a Next-to-Leading-Order perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics calculation, obtained with the POWHEG method and interfaced with PYTHIA 6 for the generation of the parton shower, fragmentation, hadronisation and underlying event.