https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201919904007
Production asymmetry of open charm mesons within unfavoured ragmentation scenario
Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Radzikowskiego 152, PL-31-342 Kraków, Poland
* e-mail: rafal.maciula@ifj.edu.pl
Published online: 1 February 2019
We consider unfavoured light quark/antiquark to D meson fragmentation. We discuss nonperturbative effects for small transverse momenta. The asymmetry for D+ and D- production measured by the LHCb collaboration provides natural constraints on the parton (quark/antiquark) fragmentation functions. We find that already a fraction of 
fragmentation probability is sufficient to account for the measured asymmetry. Large D-meson production asymmetries are found for large xF which is related to dominance of light quark/antiquark 
fragmentation over the standard c → D fragmentation. As a consequence, prompt atmospheric neutrino flux at high neutrino energies can be much larger than for the conventional c → D fragmentation. The latter can constitute a sizeable background for the cosmic neutrinos claimed to be observed recently by the IceCube Observatory.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2019
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