Double D meson production in ultraperipheral pp, pPb and PbPb collisions

The production of a $D^+ D^-$ pair by photon - photon interactions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is investigated considering ultraperipheral proton - proton ($pp$), proton - lead ($pPb$) and lead - lead ($PbPb$) collisions. Assuming that the scattering amplitude for the $\gamma \gamma \rightarrow D^+ D^-$ process can be described by the Brodsky - Lepage formalism in the heavy - quark approximation, we derive the associated differential distributions and total cross - sections. In particular, in addition to the rapidity and transverse momentum distributions, usually presented in the literature, we also present predictions for the total transverse momentum and momentum imbalance distributions. Our results indicate that a future experimental analysis of this final state is, in principle, feasible during the high luminosity run of LHC.