Charmed baryon-to-meson ratios inside jets as a discriminator of hadronization mechanisms: from color reconnection in p+p to coalescence in Pb+Pb
Abstract
Jets separate the products of hard scatterings from the underlying event and thus help to clarify the origin of the enhanced baryon-to-meson ratios observed from small to large collision systems. We investigate the charmed baryon-to-meson ratio Λc+/D0 within jets in p+p and Pb+Pb collisions at √(sNN)=5.02~TeV to discriminate between candidate hadronization mechanisms. In p+p collisions, simulated with PYTHIA8 using color reconnection (CR-BLC Mode 2) as a representative beyond-leading-color scenario, the in-jet ratio is enhanced at low-to-intermediate pT relative to the inclusive one---opposite to the light-flavor Λ/K0S case---because the color-reconnection-induced excess of the ratio remains correlated with the jet and survives the jet requirement, while the fragmentation baseline shows no such enhancement. In Pb+Pb collisions, described by the SHELL model with a coalescence plus fragmentation hybrid hadronization, the in-jet ratio is instead suppressed moderately at intermediate pT, because coalescence hadrons assembled from soft thermal partons carry no correlation with the jet direction and are preferentially discarded by the jet selection. The sign of the in-jet modification thus discriminates between the two mechanisms. Both mechanisms shift charmed hadrons toward small values of the parallel jet momentum fraction zch||, with a stronger effect on Λc+, so that the zch|| spectrum probes non-fragmentation hadronization independently of parton energy loss. The radial profile of the in-jet ratio rises with the distance from the jet axis in both systems, with the lowest-pT interval displaced farthest for color reconnection and the intermediate-pT interval for coalescence. These results provide the baseline and predictions needed for future jet-tagged charmed-hadron measurements in both collision systems.
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BibTeX
@misc{xu2026charmed,
title = {{Charmed baryon-to-meson ratios inside jets as a discriminator of hadronization mechanisms: from color reconnection in p+p to coalescence in Pb+Pb}},
author = {Zi-Xuan Xu and Wei Dai and Ben-Wei Zhang and Enke Wang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.31316},
eprint = {2610.31316},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.31316},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Charmed baryon-to-meson ratios inside jets as a discriminator of hadronization mechanisms: from color reconnection in p+p to coalescence in Pb+Pb
AU - Zi-Xuan Xu
AU - Wei Dai
AU - Ben-Wei Zhang
AU - Enke Wang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.31316
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.31316
AB - Jets separate the products of hard scatterings from the underlying event and thus help to clarify the origin of the enhanced baryon-to-meson ratios observed from small to large collision systems. We investigate the charmed baryon-to-meson ratio Λ_c^+/D^0 within jets in p+p and Pb+Pb collisions at √(s_NN)=5.02~TeV to discriminate between candidate hadronization mechanisms. In p+p collisions, simulated with PYTHIA8 using color reconnection (CR-BLC Mode 2) as a representative beyond-leading-color scenario, the in-jet ratio is enhanced at low-to-intermediate p_T relative to the inclusive one---opposite to the light-flavor Λ/K^0_S case---because the color-reconnection-induced excess of the ratio remains correlated with the jet and survives the jet requirement, while the fragmentation baseline shows no such enhancement. In Pb+Pb collisions, described by the SHELL model with a coalescence plus fragmentation hybrid hadronization, the in-jet ratio is instead suppressed moderately at intermediate p_T, because coalescence hadrons assembled from soft thermal partons carry no correlation with the jet direction and are preferentially discarded by the jet selection. The sign of the in-jet modification thus discriminates between the two mechanisms. Both mechanisms shift charmed hadrons toward small values of the parallel jet momentum fraction z^ch_||, with a stronger effect on Λ_c^+, so that the z^ch_|| spectrum probes non-fragmentation hadronization independently of parton energy loss. The radial profile of the in-jet ratio rises with the distance from the jet axis in both systems, with the lowest-p_T interval displaced farthest for color reconnection and the intermediate-p_T interval for coalescence. These results provide the baseline and predictions needed for future jet-tagged charmed-hadron measurements in both collision systems.
ER -