$D^*$ meson production in jet from combination of charm quark with light one

TL;DR

This paper investigates $D^*$ meson production in jets from charm-light quark combination in pp collisions at the LHC, using QCD factorization, and finds results consistent with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a QCD-based framework for calculating heavy meson production via quark combination, incorporating the convolution of matrix elements, distribution functions, and partonic cross sections.

Findings

Calculated $D^*$ production cross sections agree with LHC data.

The combination mechanism complements fragmentation in heavy meson production.

Framework can be extended to other hadron production processes.

Abstract

In the framework of the perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics factorization, the cross section of the heavy meson production via the combination of a heavy quark with a light one can be factorized to be the convolution of the combination matrix element, the light quark distribution function, and the hard partonic sub-cross section of the heavy quark production. The partonic distribution and the combination matrix element are functions of a scaling variable, respectively, which is the momentum fraction of the corresponding quark with respect to the heavy meson. We studied the $D^{*\pm}$ production in jet via combination in pp collision at the LHC. Our calculation can be summed with the fragmentation contribution, and the total result is comparable with the experimental data. The combination matrix elements can be further studied in various hadron production processes.