Open charm production in high multiplicity proton-proton events at the LHC

Abstract

We present the dependence of $D$ production on the charged particle multiplicity in proton-proton collisions at LHC energies. We show that, in a framework of source coherence, the open charm production exhibits a growth with the multiplicity which is stronger than linear in the high density domain. This departure from linearity was previously observed in the $J/\psi$ inclusive data from proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV and was successfully described in our approach. Our assumption, the existence of coherence effects present in proton-proton collisions at high energy, applies for high multiplicity proton-proton collisions in the central rapidity region and should affect any hard observable.