Charm particle production in hadronic collisions

Abstract

We study charm particle production in hadron-hadron collisions. After calculating perturbatively the charm quark differential cross section, we study the hadronization mechanisms. It is shown that recombination is the key to understand the so called Leading Particle Effect in charm meson production. For charm baryon production, however, leading particle effects are due to a combination of contributions coming from both, the recombination and the fragmentation mechanisms. We compare our calculations to experimental data on charm hadron production in $π^- N$ and $p N$ interactions from several experiments and show that a consistent description of them can be reached without the aid of other mechanims than recombination and fragmentation.