Open charm production and asymmetry in p Ne collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\scriptscriptstyle {\textrm{NN}}}}$ = 68.5 GeV
A measurement of D 0 meson production by the LHCb experiment in its fixed-target configuration is presented. The production of D 0 mesons is studied with a beam of 2.5 TeV protons colliding on a gaseous neon target at rest, corresponding to a nucleon–nucleon centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 68.5 GeV. The sum of the D 0 and $\overline{D}$ 0 production cross-section in pNe collisions in the centre-of-mass rapidity range y* ϵ [-2.29,0] is found to be $σ^{y* ϵ [-2.29,0]}_{D^0}$ = 48.2 ± 0.3 ± 4.5 μb/nucleon where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The D 0 and $\overline{D}$ 0 production asymmetry is also evaluated and suggests a trend towards negative values at large negative y*. The considered models do not account precisely for all the features observed in the LHCb data, but theoretical predictions including 1% intrinsic charm and 10% recombination contributions better describe the data than the other models considered.