Charmed meson fragmentation functions

Abstract

Fragmentation functions for heavy-light mesons, like the charmed $D$, ${D}^{*}$ mesons, are proposed. They rest on next-to-leading QCD perturbative fragmentation functions for heavy quarks, with the addition of a nonperturbative term describing phenomenologically the quark $\ensuremath{\rightarrow}$ meson transition. The cross section for production of large ${p}_{T}$ $D$, ${D}^{*}$ mesons at the Fermilab Tevatron is evaluated in this framework.