Production properties ofD ⁰,D ⁺,D ^*+ andD ⁺ _s in 230 GeV/cπ ⁻ andK ⁻-Cu interactions

Abstract

We have studied the hadronic production of charmed mesons in the NA 32 experiment at CERN. A special trigger together with a high resolution vertex detector consisting of charge coupled devices and silicon microstrip detectors allowed the selection of very clean samples of charmed mesons. We have collected 852 fully reconstructed decays: 60D ⁺ _s →K ⁺ K ⁻π⁺, 543D°→K ⁻π⁺ andK ⁻π⁺π⁻π⁺ as well as 249D ⁺→K ⁻π⁺π⁺ (or charge conjugate). 147 mesons out of our${{D^0 } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{D^0 } {\bar D^0 }}} \right. \kern-\nulldelimiterspace} {\bar D^0 }}$ sample were produced via chargedD ^* state. For all charmed mesons we determine the total production cross-section and study thex _F andp ² _t distributions.