Open charm production and asymmetry in $p$Ne collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\scriptscriptstyle\rm NN}} =$ 68.5 GeV
hep-ex
/ Authors
LHCb collaboration, R. Aaij, A. S. W. Abdelmotteleb, C. Abellan Beteta, F. Abudinén, T. Ackernley, B. Adeva, M. Adinolfi, P. Adlarson, H. Afsharnia
and 1060 more authors
C. Agapopoulou, C. A. Aidala, Z. Ajaltouni, S. Akar, K. Akiba, J. Albrecht, F. Alessio, M. Alexander, A. Alfonso Albero, Z. Aliouche, P. Alvarez Cartelle, R. Amalric, S. Amato, J. L. Amey, Y. Amhis, L. An, L. Anderlini, M. Andersson, A. Andreianov, M. Andreotti, D. Andreou, D. Ao, F. Archilli, A. Artamonov
/ Abstract
A measurement of $D^0$ meson production by the LHCb experiment in its fixed-target configuration is presented. The production of $D^0$ mesons is studied with a beam of 2.5 TeV protons colliding on a gaseous neon target at rest, corresponding to a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 68.5 GeV. The sum of the $D^0$ and ${\overline D^0}$ production cross-section in $p$Ne collisions in the centre-of-mass rapidity range $y^{\star}\in [-2.29, 0]$ is found to be $σ_{D^{0}}^{y^\star \in [-2.29, 0]} = 48.2 \pm 0.3 \pm 4.5 \,μ\textrm{b/nucleon}$ where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The $D^0-{\overline D^0}$ production asymmetry is also evaluated and suggests a trend towards negative values at large negative $y^{\star}$. The considered models do not account precisely for all the features observed in the LHCb data, but theoretical predictions including 1$\%$ intrinsic charm and 10$\%$ recombination contributions better describe the data than the other models considered.