Charm Hadrons in pp collisions at LHC energy within a Coalescence plus Fragmentation approach

Abstract

The recent experimental measurements on $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=5.02 \,\rm TeV$ have shown a very large abundance of heavy baryon production corresponding to a ratio of $Λ_c/D^0 \sim 0.6$, about one order of magnitude larger than what measured in $e^+e^-$, $ep$ collisions and even in $pp$ collisions at LHC, but at forward rapidity. We apply for the first time to $pp$ collisions a quark coalescence plus fragmentation approach developed for $AA$ collisions, assuming the formation of Hot QCD matter at finite temperature. An approach that has correctly predicted a $Λ_c/D \sim O(1)$ in AA collisions at RHIC energy. We calculate the heavy baryon/meson ratio and the $p_T$ spectra of charmed hadrons with and without strangeness content: $D^{0}$, $D_{s}$, $Λ_{c}^{+}$, $Ξ_c$ and $Ω_c$ in $pp$ collisions at top LHC energies, finding a satisfactory result for the measured $Λ_{c}^{+}/D^0$ and the $Ξ_c/D^0$ without any specific tuning of parameters to $pp$ collisions. At variance with other approaches a coalescence approach predicts also a significant production of $Ω_c$ such that $Ω_c/D^0 \sim O(10^{-1})$ .