Download or read book A Study of D[sup 0] Production from 500 GeV Pi[sup -]--nucleon Interactions written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fermilab experiment E791 took data during six months in 1991 using a 500 GeV[pi][sup -] beam on platinum and diamond targets for the purpose of studying the production and decay of particles containing a charm quark. In this dissertation, results are presented on the production of the D[sup 0] and[anti D][sup 0] mesons using fully reconstructed D[sup 0][yields]K[pi] and D[sup 0][yields]K[pi][pi][pi] decays. Specifically, the total forward production cross section is measured as well as differential cross sections as a function of the scaled longitudinal momentum, Feynman-x (x[sub F]), and the transverse momentum squared (p[sub T][sup 2]). The results are compared to theoretical predictions from a next-to-leading order (NLO) calculation and from a leading order Monte Carlo event generator, PYTHIA/JETSET, which uses parton showers to account for higher-order terms. The comparison is made to both the c quark predictions and the predictions for D mesons using the Peterson fragmentation scheme for the NLO calculation and the Lund string fragmentation for the PYTHIA/JETSET prediction. The data are also compared to previous measurements by other experiments which used a[pi][sup -] beam. Assuming an A[sup 1] dependence, the total forward cross section for the sum of D[sup 0] and[anti D][sup 0] production is measured to be[sigma](D[sup 0]/[anti D][sup 0]; x[sub F]>0)=15.4[sup+1.8][sub -2.3][micro]barns/nucleon, in good agreement with other experiments and the NLO prediction. The differential cross sections agree best with the NLO c quark prediction and the PYTHIA/JETSET D[sup 0] meson prediction. Several functions are fit to the differential cross sections. From the fits to the x[sub F] distribution we find the x[sub F] distribution peaks at x[sub F]=0.013[+-]0.004, significantly above zero as predicted by the harder pion parton distribution function. Fitting the shape of the x[sub F] distribution to (1-x[sub F])[sup n], while not a good fit, gives n=4.61[+-]0.19 for the rang e0.05