A Pythia8 Tune for Open Charm and Beauty Production in Fixed-Target Collisions
Abstract
We present FTFT (Fixed-Target Fragmentation Tune), a set of Pythia8 parameters optimised for the production of charm and beauty hadrons in fixed-target collisions at centre-of-mass energies √s ≃ 20−42 GeV. Accurate heavy-flavour production in this regime is needed to predict neutrino fluxes and hidden-particle yields at beam-dump experiments such as SHiP. The tune is derived in two stages. First, differential distributions in Feynman-x (xF), transverse momentum squared (pT2), and charge or leading-particle production asymmetry of D mesons are fitted to data from pion- and proton-beam fixed-target experiments. Second, K-factors for each beam are extracted from inclusive charm cross-section measurements to scale the simulated cross section to the measured data. The fitted charm-fragmentation and multiparton-interaction parameters depart from standard LHC-tuned defaults, in line with earlier fixed-target studies.
Related
- Charm quark production in heavy-ion collisions as a signature of pre-equilibrium
- Data-driven measurements of the beauty hadron production in p-Pb collisions at \sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.02 and 8.16 TeV
- Charm and quarkonium production in collider and fixed-target mode at LHCb
- Hidden-charm and hidden-beauty hybrid mesons
- Flattenicity dependence of charge and transverse-momentum balance functions in pp collisions at √s=13.6 TeV with PYTHIA8
BibTeX
@misc{climescu2026pythia8,
title = {{A Pythia8 Tune for Open Charm and Beauty Production in Fixed-Target Collisions}},
author = {Matei Climescu and Didar Dobur and Kirill Skovpen},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.29076},
eprint = {2608.29076},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.29076},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A Pythia8 Tune for Open Charm and Beauty Production in Fixed-Target Collisions
AU - Matei Climescu
AU - Didar Dobur
AU - Kirill Skovpen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.29076
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.29076
AB - We present FTFT (Fixed-Target Fragmentation Tune), a set of Pythia8 parameters optimised for the production of charm and beauty hadrons in fixed-target collisions at centre-of-mass energies √s ≃ 20−42 GeV. Accurate heavy-flavour production in this regime is needed to predict neutrino fluxes and hidden-particle yields at beam-dump experiments such as SHiP. The tune is derived in two stages. First, differential distributions in Feynman-x (x_F), transverse momentum squared (p_T^2), and charge or leading-particle production asymmetry of D mesons are fitted to data from pion- and proton-beam fixed-target experiments. Second, K-factors for each beam are extracted from inclusive charm cross-section measurements to scale the simulated cross section to the measured data. The fitted charm-fragmentation and multiparton-interaction parameters depart from standard LHC-tuned defaults, in line with earlier fixed-target studies.
ER -