Study of charm fragmentation with charm meson and baryon azimuthal correlation measurements with ALICE

TL;DR

This paper investigates charm quark hadronisation in proton-proton collisions at the LHC by measuring azimuthal correlations of charm mesons and baryons, providing insights into the differences from leptonic collision environments.

Contribution

It presents detailed measurements of charm hadron azimuthal correlations and tagged jets in pp collisions at 13 TeV, exploring flavour dependence of charm hadronisation.

Findings

Charm hadronisation shows dependence on hadron flavour content.

Measurements suggest differences from e+e- collision fragmentation functions.

Results improve understanding of QCD in high-energy hadronic collisions.

Abstract

Fragmentation functions are typically parametrised exploiting measurements performed in $\mathrm{e^+e^-}$ and $\mathrm{ep}$ collisions, under the assumption of universality across collision systems. Measurements of charm-hadron yields in proton--proton (pp) collisions at LHC have proved that the hadronisation of heavy quarks differs between hadronic and leptonic collisions. Measurements of charm meson and baryon azimuthal correlations, as well as tagged jets, can provide more stringent constraints on the characteristics of charm hadronisation in hadronic collisions. The ALICE Collaboration has conducted detailed studies on the azimuthal correlation with charged particles, as well as tagged jets measurements of non-strange D mesons and $\Lambda_{\text{c}}^{+}$ baryons in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV. Additionally, ALICE has investigated the azimuthal correlation of $\text{D}_{\text{s}}^{+}$ mesons with charged particles in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13.6$ TeV. This study provides valuable insights into the possible dependence of charm quark hadronisation on the flavour content of the hadrons produced in the final state. This deeper understanding of charm hadronisation mechanisms, achieved thanks to the contribution of all these studies, can significantly enhance the accuracy of fragmentation function modelling and improve our overall knowledge of quantum chromodynamics in high-energy hadronic collisions.