Measurement of D0, D+, D*+ and D+s production in Pb-Pb collisions at $$ \sqrt{{\mathrm{s}}_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02 $$ TeV

Abstract

A bstract We report measurements of the production of prompt D 0 , D + , D *+ and D s + mesons in Pb–Pb collisions at the centre-of-mass energy per nucleon-nucleon pair $$ \sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02 $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:msqrt> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>5.02</mml:mn> </mml:math> TeV, in the centrality classes 0–10%, 30–50% and 60–80%. The D-meson production yields are measured at mid-rapidity (| y | &lt; 0 . 5) as a function of transverse momentum ( p T ). The p T intervals covered in central collisions are: 1 &lt; p T &lt; 50 GeV /c for D 0 , 2 &lt; p T &lt; 50GeV /c for D + , 3 &lt; p T &lt; 50GeV /c for D *+ , and 4 &lt; p T &lt; 16GeV /c for D s + mesons. The nuclear modification factors ( R AA ) for non-strange D mesons (D 0 , D + , D *+ ) show minimum values of about 0.2 for p T = 6–10 GeV /c in the most central collisions and are compatible within uncertainties with those measured at $$ {\sqrt{s}}_{\mathrm{NN}}=2.76 $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2.76</mml:mn> </mml:math> TeV. For D s + mesons, the values of R AA are larger than those of non-strange D mesons, but compatible within uncertainties. In central collisions the average R AA of non-strange D mesons is compatible with that of charged particles for p T &gt; 8 GeV /c , while it is larger at lower p T . The nuclear modification factors for strange and non-strange D mesons are also compared to theoretical models with different implementations of in-medium energy loss.