A general-mass scheme for prompt charm production at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper applies a new factorization scheme at next-to-leading order to model prompt charm production at hadron colliders, achieving good agreement with LHCb data and highlighting the need for higher-order contributions.

Contribution

It introduces the S-ACOT-MPS factorization scheme at NLO for charm production, improving theoretical predictions for collider experiments.

Findings

Good agreement with LHCb charm meson data at 7 and 13 TeV

Low-$p_T$ data are near the theoretical error margins

Higher-order contributions are necessary for better accuracy

Abstract

In these proceedings, we apply the recently developed S-ACOT-MPS factorization scheme at the next-to-leading order to prompt charm production at hadron colliders. It provides a good agreement with experimental data on charm meson production measured by LHCb at 7 and 13 TeV. The low-$p_T$ data are on the margins of the theoretical error bands, emphasizing the importance of including contributions beyond the next-to-leading order.