Eur. Phys. J. C (2024) 84: 942
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-13265-9

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Investigating $D^0$ meson production in p-Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV with a multi-phase transport model

¹ Department of Physical Science and Technology, School of Science, Wuhan University of Technology, 430070, Wuhan, China
² Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (MOE), Central China Normal University, 430079, Wuhan, China
³ School of Mathematics and Physics, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 430074, Wuhan, China
⁴ Shanghai Research Center for Theoretical Nuclear Physics, NSFC and Fudan University, 200438, Shanghai, China
⁵ Institute of Particle Physics and Key Laboratory of Quark&Lepton Physics (MOE), Central China Normal University, 430079, Wuhan, China
⁶ Department of Physics, East Carolina University, 27858, Greenville, NC, USA

^a chaoz@whut.edu.cn

Received: 10 March 2024
Accepted: 20 August 2024
Published online: 18 September 2024

Abstract

We study the production of $D^0$ meson in p+p and p-Pb collisions using the improved AMPT model considering both coalescence and independent fragmentation of charm quarks after the Cronin broadening is included. After a detailed discussion of the improvements implemented in the AMPT model for heavy quark production, we show that the modified AMPT model can provide a good description of $D^0$ meson spectra in p-Pb collisions, the $Q_{\text{pPb}}$ data at different centralities and $R_{\text{pPb}}$ data in both mid- and forward (backward) rapidities. We also studied the effects of nuclear shadowing and parton cascade on the rapidity dependence of $D^0$ meson production and $R_{\text{pPb}}$. Our results indicate that using the same strength of the Cronin effect (i.e $\delta$ value) as that obtained from the mid-rapidity data leads to a considerable overestimation of the $D^0$ meson spectra and $R_{\text{pPb}}$ data at high $p_{\text{T}}$ in the backward rapidity. As a result, the $\delta$ is determined via a ${\chi }^2$ fitting of the $R_{\text{pPb}}$ data across various rapidities. This work lays the foundation for a better understanding of cold-nuclear-matter (CNM) effects in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.