Estimation of charm production cross section in hadronic interactions at high energies

Abstract

Results of processing experimental data on charm production in hadron-hadron interactions are presented. The analysis is carried out within the frame of phenomenological model of diffraction production and quark statistics based on additive quark model (AQM). In low energy region sqrt s = 20 - 40GeV, the cross sections si_ {pN to c bar cX} (s), si_ {pi N to c bar cX} (s) are fitted by logarithmic function with the parameters connected by relationship of AQM. At collider energies 200, 540, 900, 1800 GeV, the values of si_{bar pp to c bar cX} (s) were obtained by a quark statistics method from the data on diffraction dissociation. It is established, that logarithmic function with universal numerical parameters describes the whole set of low-energy and high-energy data with high accuracy. The expected values of cross sections are si_{pp to c bar cX} = 250 pm 40 mu b and 355 pm 57 mu b at TEVATRON energy sqrt {s} = 1.96 TeV and LHC energy sqrt {s} = 14 TeV accordingly. Opportunities of use of the obtained results for calibration of a flux of "prompt" muons in high-energy component of cosmic rays are discussed.