First measurement of charm production in fixed-target configuration at the LHC

Abstract

The first measurement of heavy-flavour production by the LHCb experiment in its fixed-target mode is presented. The production of $J/ψ$ and $D^0$ mesons is studied with beams of protons of different energies colliding with gaseous targets of helium and argon with nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energies of $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 86.6 $ and $ 110.4$ ${\rm GeV}$, respectively. The $J/ψ$ and $D^0$ (including charge conjugate) production cross sections in $p{\rm He}$ collisions in the rapidity range $[2,4.6]$ are found to be $σ_{J/ψ} = 652 \pm 33$ (stat) $\pm 42$ (syst) nb$/$nucleon and $σ_{D^0} = 80.8 \pm 2.4$ (stat) $\pm 6.3$ (syst) $μ$b$/$nucleon, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. No evidence for a substantial intrinsic charm content of the nucleon is observed in the large Bjorken-$x$ region.

All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2018-023.html