Parton Model Calculation of Inclusive Charm Production by a Low-energy Antiproton Beam

The cross section for inclusive charm production by a low-energy antiproton beam is calculated using the parton model and next-to-leading order perturbative QCD. For an antiproton beam with a momentum of 15 GeV, the charm cross section at next-to-leading order in the QCD coupling constant changes by more than an order of magnitude as the charm quark mass is varied from 1.3 to 1.7 GeV. The variations can be reduced by demanding that the same value of the charm quark mass give the measured charm cross sections for fixed-target experiments with a proton beam. The resulting estimate for the charm cross section from a low-energy antiproton beam is large enough to allow the study of charm meson mixing.