Open Charm production in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13.6 TeV with Pythia event generator

Abstract

Charm and beauty are heavy quarks with observed masses of 1.28 GeV/$\textit{c}^2$ and 4.18 GeV/$\textit{c}^2$ respectively. They are produced in initial hard scattering processes. Due to their small formation time ($Δt \sim0.1 fm/\textit{c}$) as compared to the formation time of QGP ($Δt \sim0.3 fm/\textit{c}$) at the LHC, they experience all the stages occuring during the time evolution of the hot and dense medium produced in heavy-ion collisions. Therefore, the measurement of open charm and beauty production allows probing QGP properties and investigating the color charge and mass dependence of the parton in-medium energy loss. Moreover, due to their large masses ($m_c , m_b \gg Λ_{QCD}$ ) their pp production cross-sections are calculable within the domain of perturbative QCD constituting an excellent test of pQCD calculations. The aim of this study is to understand the processes involved in the production of charm quarks through the productions of D$^+$, D$^0$, D$^+_s$ and $Λ_c^+$ hadrons. Further to investigate the possibility of hadronization of the charm quarks, ratios like $Λ_c^+$/$D^+$, $D_s^+$/$D^+$, $Λ_c^+$/$D^0$ and $D_s^+$/$D^0$ are also measured. For the current analysis, the events are generated by using PYTHIA 8 for pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV. PYTHIA 8 has proved to be quite successful in explaining the heavy-flavor particle production at the LHC energies.