The Leading Particle Effect in Charm Hadroproduction from Heavy Quark Recombination

The large asymmetry between the cross sections for charm hadrons and their antiparticles in charm hadroproduction is referred to as the leading particle effect. Heavy quark recombination is a new mechanism for heavy hadron production that generates charm asymmetries by a hard-scattering parton process. Using this mechanism, the E791 data on the D^- - D⁺ asymmetry in π^- N collisions can be fit reasonably well by adjusting a single multiplicative nonperturbative constant.