Inclusive open charm photoproduction in ultraperipheral collisions at the LHC with in the generalized photon-nucleus fixed-order next-to-leading logarithm framework

We compute the inclusive D⁰ production cross section in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC as a function of the D⁰ transverse momentum and rapidity. These calculations are carried out within the new generalized photon-nucleus FONLL (GγA-FONLL) framework, which can predict photonuclear cross sections for charm and beauty hadrons in electron-proton, electron-nucleus, and ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions. The framework relies on fixed-order next-to-leading logarithm (FONLL) to model heavy-quark production in photonuclear collisions and employs a photon-flux reweighting procedure to describe the production cross sections in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions. The GγA calculations are first validated against the photoproduction cross sections of D^* in electron-proton collisions at HERA. The predictions for the D⁰ production cross section in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC are then presented and compared to the first experimental results obtained by CMS at (Formula presented.). The predictions are benchmarked against different choices of nuclear parton distribution functions, fragmentation functions, and renormalization and factorization scales.