The forward production of charm states in 350 GeV p-Fe interactions has been studied via the production of prompt single muons with momentum p ≳ 20 GeV/ c . The data indicate equal production of single μ + and μ − events. The observed momentum distributions can be fit with the hypothesis that D mesons are produced with an invariant cross section proportional to (1 − x F ) 5.0±0.8 exp[−(2 ± 0.3) P t ] and do not favor a large diffractive cross section predicted by intrinsic charm models. Extrapolation of the distributions to x F = 0 yields a total D D production cross section of 22.6 ± 2.1(±3.6)ωb/nucleon on the assumption of a linear A dependence and 8% average semileptonic branching ratio of charm states.
Hadronic production of charmed particles in association with muons from their semileptonic decay has been observed in a high-resolution streamer-chamber experiment performed at Fermilab. A miss-distance analysis of the pictures gives a signal of 17.3±4.7 events. Depending on the production model this corresponds to a range of neutron-nucleon cross sections from 8 to 50 μb, assuming an A23 dependence.
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