Heavy flavor particle production in p+p collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider energies

Abstract

The study of heavy-flavored baryon and meson production in proton-proton (pp) collisions provides crucial insight into the hadronization mechanisms of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). In this work an attempt has been made to describe the existing ALICE and LHCb results on the $p_\mathrm{T}$-differential production cross-section of $\Lambda_c^+$, $D^0$, $\Lambda_b^0$ and $B^0$ ($\bar{B}^0$), and $p_\mathrm{T}$-dependent $\Lambda_c^+/D^0$ and $\Lambda_b^0/B^0(\bar{B}^0)$ ratios, in light of the color-string junction inspired PYTHIA-8.314 model. A comparison of the results obtained with various datasets generated with different tuning parameters and the existing experimental results of ALICE and LHCb at $\sqrt{s} = 7$ and $13$ TeV underlines the relevance of string-junction dynamics in heavy-flavored particle production. The results of the present investigation reveal that while stopping the junction-antijunction reconfiguration in the non-perturbative PYTHIA-8.314 model successfully describes the considered ALICE experimental observables of the charm sector, on the other hand, allowing junction-antijunction reconfiguration, keeping other fragmentation parameters the same, better describes the LHCb experimental observables of both charm and bottom sectors.