Simulation study of Open Charm production in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV using Pythia 8

TL;DR

This study uses PYTHIA 8 simulations to analyze open charm production in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV, focusing on charm hadron yields and hadronization ratios to understand charm quark production mechanisms.

Contribution

First detailed simulation-based analysis of charm hadron production and hadronization ratios in 13 TeV pp collisions using PYTHIA 8.

Findings

Charm hadron ratios suggest possible hadronization mechanisms.

PYTHIA 8 effectively reproduces heavy-flavor production at LHC energies.

Insights into charm quark production processes in high-energy collisions.

Abstract

Charm and beauty are heavy quarks with observed masses of 1.28 GeV/$\textit{c}^2$ and 4.18 GeV/$\textit{c}^2$ respectively. They are produced in initial hard scattering processes. Due to their small formation time ($\Delta t \sim0.1 fm/\textit{c}$) as compared to the formation time of QGP ($\Delta t \sim0.3 fm/\textit{c}$) at the LHC, they experience all the stages occuring during the time evolution of the hot and dense medium produced in heavy-ion collisions. Therefore, the measurement of open charm and beauty production allows probing QGP properties and investigating the color charge and mass dependence of the parton in-medium energy loss. Moreover, due to their large masses ($m_c , m_b \gg \Lambda_{QCD}$ ) their pp production cross-sections are calculable within the domain of perturbative QCD constituting an excellent test of pQCD calculations. The aim of this study is to understand the processes involved in the production of charm quarks through the productions of D$^+$, D$^0$, D$^+_s$ and $\Lambda_c^+$ hadrons. Further to investigate the possibility of hadronization of the charm quarks, ratios like $\Lambda_c^+$/$D^+$, $D_s^+$/$D^+$, $\Lambda_c^+$/$D^0$ and $D_s^+$/$D^0$ are also measured. For the current analysis, the events are generated by using PYTHIA 8 for pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV. PYTHIA 8 has proved to be quite successful in explaining the heavy-flavor particle production at the LHC energies.