sPHENIX measurement of Open-Charm Baryon-to-Meson Ratios in $p$+$p$ collisions at RHIC

TL;DR

sPHENIX at RHIC has collected extensive $p$+$p$ collision data, enabling the first measurement of open-charm baryon-to-meson ratios and exploration of heavy-flavor hadronization mechanisms.

Contribution

This work presents the first measurement of the $ ext{Lambda}_c^+ / D^0$ ratio in $p$+$p$ collisions at RHIC energies, utilizing high-statistics data from sPHENIX.

Findings

Large $p$+$p$ dataset enables unprecedented heavy-flavor measurements.

First exploration of baryon-to-meson ratio in $p$+$p$ at RHIC.

Potential insights into baryon hadronization mechanisms.

Abstract

sPHENIX is a state-of-the-art experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), dedicated to the study of heavy-flavor and jet physics. Its precision tracking system, combined with streaming readout, enables heavy-flavor measurements with high-statistics and essentially unbiased data samples. During the 2024 run, sPHENIX was fully commissioned and recorded a sample of 100 billion unbiased $p$+$p$ collisions, together with a minimum-bias Au+Au dataset. The 2025 run further expanded the sPHENIX dataset with high-statistics $p$+$p$, O+O and Au+Au collisions. This extensive $p$+$p$ sample opens the door to heavy-flavor measurements with orders of magnitude more statistics than previously available at RHIC. Notably, there has been no prior measurement of the $\Lambda_c^+ / D^0$ baseline in $p$+$p$ collisions at RHIC energies. The large sPHENIX dataset now enables the first exploration of key open questions, such as the hadronization mechanism of baryons and the strange-to-light flavor meson ratio.