https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0227-5
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
The leading particle effect from light quark fragmentation in charm hadroproduction
1
Department of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, P.R. China
2
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100080, P.R. China
3
CCAST (World Laboratory), P.O. Box 8730, Beijing, 100080, P.R. China
* e-mail: mabq@phy.pku.edu.cn
Received:
6
July
2006
Published online:
17
February
2007
The asymmetry of D- and D+ meson production in π-N scattering observed by the E791 experiment is a phenomenon typical for what is known as the leading particle effect in charm hadroproduction. We show that the phenomenon can be explained by the effect of light quark fragmentation into charmed hadrons (LQF). Meanwhile, the size of the LQF effect is estimated from the data of the E791 experiment. A comparison is made with the estimate of the LQF effect from the prompt like-sign dimuon rate in neutrino experiments. The influence of the LQF effect on the measurement of the nucleon strange distribution asymmetry from charged current charm production processes is briefly discussed.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2007
