Production cross sections of light and charmed mesons in $e^+e^-$ annihilation near 10.58 GeV

TL;DR

This paper presents detailed measurements of production cross sections for various light and charmed mesons in electron-positron collisions near 10.58 GeV, comparing results with Monte Carlo predictions and previous data to improve understanding of hadronization processes.

Contribution

First comprehensive measurement of light and charmed meson production cross sections at 10.58 GeV, with improved analysis techniques and comparison to Monte Carlo models and prior results.

Findings

Cross sections for light mesons align with no enhanced vector meson production.

Charmed meson cross sections agree with previous measurements after correction updates.

Data provide constraints for fragmentation models in high-energy collisions.

Abstract

We report measurements of production cross sections for $\rho^+$, $\rho^0$, $\omega$, $K^{*+}$, $K^{*0}$, $\phi$, $\eta$, $K_S^0$, $f_0(980)$, $D^+$, $D^0$, $D_s^+$, $D^{*+}$, $D^{*0}$, and $D^{*+}_s$ in $e^+e^-$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy near 10.58 GeV. The data were recorded by the Belle experiment, consisting of 571 fb$^{-1}$ at 10.58 GeV and 74 fb$^{-1}$ at 10.52 GeV. Production cross sections are extracted as a function of the fractional hadron momentum $x_p$ . The measurements are compared to {\sc pythia} Monte Carlo generator predictions with various fragmentation settings, including those that have increased fragmentation into vector mesons over pseudo-scalar mesons. The cross sections measured for light hadrons are consistent with no additional increase of vector over pseudo-scalar mesons. The charmed-meson cross sections are compared to earlier measurements -- when available -- including older Belle results, which they supersede. They are in agreement before application of an improved initial-state radiation correction procedure that causes slight changes in their \xp shapes.