D-Meson Production from Recombination in Hadronic Collisions

Abstract

Nonperturbative effects in $D$-meson production in pion-nucleon and proton-nucleon collisions are investigated within the recombination model. The coalescence of perturbatively created charm quarks with sea- and valence-quarks from projectile and target fragments is shown to be competitive in magnitude with standard fragmentation calculations at both central (small $x_F$) and forward rapidities. Corresponding flavor asymmetries for inclusive $D$-meson production are thus mostly generated on the (light-) parton distribution level, and turn out to be in reasonable overall agreement with available fixed-target data. Predictions for upcoming measurements at RHIC are given.

14 pages RevTeX including 10 ps-figures