Measurement of Prompt Charm Meson Production Cross Sections in p anti-p Collisions at s**(1/2) = 1.96 TeV

TL;DR

This paper presents measurements of prompt charm meson production cross sections in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV, using data from the CDF II detector, and compares results with theoretical predictions.

Contribution

First measurement of differential charm meson production cross sections at Tevatron energies using a novel trigger sensitive to heavy flavor decays.

Findings

Measured cross sections in four decay modes

Data agrees with some theoretical models

Provides new insights into charm production mechanisms

Abstract

We report on measurements of differential cross sections d sigma/d p_t for prompt charm meson production in p anti-p collisions at s**(1/2) = 1.96 TeV using 5.8 +/- 0.3 pb-1 of data from the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. The data are collected with a new trigger that is sensitive to the long lifetime of hadrons containing heavy flavor. The charm meson cross sections are measured in the central rapidity region |y| \leq 1 in four fully reconstructed decay modes: D0 --> K- pi+, D*+ -> D0 pi+, D+ --> K- pi+ pi+, D+_s--> phi pi+, and their charge conjugates. The measured cross sections are compared to theoretical calculations.