Production of charm mesons at high transverse momentum in 515 GeV/c pi- nucleon collisions

TL;DR

This paper reports on the measurement of high transverse momentum charm mesons produced in 515 GeV/c pion-nucleon collisions, providing data that tests perturbative QCD predictions and compares with other experimental results.

Contribution

First measurement of high transverse momentum charm mesons in 515 GeV/c pion-nucleon collisions, including cross section determination and comparison with theoretical models.

Findings

Measured differential cross section for D mesons from 1 to 8 GeV/c

Integrated charged D meson cross section of 11.4±2.7±3.3 μb/nucleon

Data consistent with perturbative QCD and PYTHIA predictions

Abstract

We present results on the production of high transverse momentum charm mesons in collisions of 515 GeV/c negative pions with beryllium and copper targets. The experiment recorded a large sample of events containing high transverse momentum showers detected in an electromagnetic calorimeter. From these data, a sample of charm mesons has been reconstructed via their decay into the fully charged K pi pi mode. A measurement of the single inclusive transverse momentum distribution of charged D mesons from 1 to 8 GeV/c is presented. An extrapolation of the measured differential cross section yields an integrated charged D cross section of 11.4+-2.7(stat)+-3.3(syst) microbarns per nucleon for charged D mesons with Feynman x greater than zero. The data are compared with expectations based upon next-to-leading order perturbative QCD, as well as with results from PYTHIA. We also compare our integrated charged D cross section with measurements from other experiments.