Inclusive open charm photoproduction in ultraperipheral collisions at the LHC with in the generalized photon-nucleus fixed-order next-to-leading logarithm framework

We compute the inclusive 𝐷⁰ production cross section in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC as a function of the 𝐷⁰ transverse momentum and rapidity. These calculations are carried out within the new generalized photon-nucleus FONLL (G⁡𝛾⁢A−FONLL) framework, which can predict photonuclear cross sections for charm and beauty hadrons in electron-proton, electron-nucleus, and ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions. The framework relies on fixed-order next-to-leading logarithm (FONLL) to model heavy-quark production in photonuclear collisions and employs a photon-flux reweighting procedure to describe the production cross sections in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions. The G⁡𝛾⁢A calculations are first validated against the photoproduction cross sections of 𝐷* in electron-proton collisions at HERA. The predictions for the 𝐷⁰ production cross section in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC are then presented and compared to the first experimental results obtained by CMS at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.36 ⁢TeV. The predictions are benchmarked against different choices of nuclear parton distribution functions, fragmentation functions, and renormalization and factorization scales.. Authors: Cacciari, Matteo [Sorbonne Université, Paris (France); Université Paris Cité (France)] (ORCID:0000000268355161); Innocenti, Gian Michele [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (United States)]; Staśto, Anna M. [The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000206763178). DOE Contract: SC0002145; SC0011088. Subjects: Parton distribution functions; Perturbative QCD; Phenomenology