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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik
T 78: Flavour Physics V
T 78.4: Talk
Thursday, March 19, 2026, 17:00–17:15, KH 02.014
Total and differential charm production cross sections in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV — •Aviral Akhil and Achim Geiser — Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, Hamburg, Germany
Charm production sits at the boundary where perturbative QCD begins to lose precision and non-perturbative effects become significant, making it a powerful probe of the strong interaction. To explore this challenging regime, we present measurements of D*-meson differential charm production cross sections at a proton proton center-of-mass energy of √s = 13 TeV using the CMS detector. The analysis reconstructs charm hadron decays across the largest accessible phase space to minimize extrapolation to the full charm production region. Results are reported as differential cross sections in transverse momentum and rapidity and compared to QCD predictions as well as to measurements from other LHC experiments. The fiducial cross sections are then extrapolated to the total charm-pair cross section using a data-driven parameterization of charm fragmentation fractions that incorporates recent measurements of meson-baryon ratios dependent on pT. The use of non-universal, experimentally constrained fragmentation improves the fragmentation treatment relative to earlier extractions. These results provide constraints on key QCD parameters such as the charm-quark mass and parton distribution functions at low momentum fraction and contribute to a more detailed understanding of heavy-flavour production dynamics at the LHC.
Keywords: charm; CMS; QCD; heavy flavour production