Paper
Measurement of charm production at central rapidity in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 2.76$ TeV
Authors
ALICE Collaboration
Abstract
The -differential production cross sections of the prompt (B feed-down subtracted) charmed mesons D, D, and D in the rapidity range , and for transverse momentum GeV/, were measured in proton-proton collisions at TeV with the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The analysis exploited the hadronic decays DK, DK, DD, and their charge conjugates, and was performed on a nb event sample collected in 2011 with a minimum-bias trigger. The total charm production cross section at TeV and at 7 TeV was evaluated by extrapolating to the full phase space the -differential production cross sections at TeV and our previous measurements at TeV. The results were compared to existing measurements and to perturbative-QCD calculations. The fraction of cdbar D mesons produced in a vector state was also determined.