Recently the ALICE Collaboration has published a few data of charm hadrons in Pb + Pb collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We extend the quark combination to the charm sector to deduce the yield formulas of charm hadrons and point out that the measurement of charm hadron yields can provide important insights into charm quark hadronization mechanism in high energy reactions. We propose several types of yield ratios, e.g., $D^{*+}/D^0,D_s^{+}/D^{+}$, and ${\Lambda }_c^{+}/D_s^{+}$, to measure various properties of low $p_T$ charm quark hadronization. We argue that ratios $D_s^{+}/D^0$ and $2D_s^{+}/(D^0+D^{+})$ as the function of transverse momentum $\left(p_T\right)$ can serve as good probes for the dynamics of charm quark hadronization. We further make predictions for the yields and $p_T$ spectra of identified charm hadrons in central Pb + Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76$ TeV.

• Received 19 November 2013
• Revised 11 December 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.91.014909