Charm-Baryon Production in Proton-Proton Collisions

Understand

Recent measurements of charm-baryon production in proton-proton collisions at the LHC have found a surprisingly large yield relative to those of $D$-mesons.

• We propose that this observation can be explained by the statistical hadronization model (SHM), by employing a largely augmented set of charm-baryon states beyond the current listings of the particle data group.
• We estimate the additional states using guidance from the relativistic quark model and from lattice QCD.
• Using charm- and strange-quark fugacity factors to account for the well-known suppression of heavy flavor in elementary collisions, we compute the yields and spectra of $D$, $D_s$ and $\Lambda_c$ hadrons in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=5$\,TeV.