D-meson production from recombination in hadronic collisions

Nonperturbative effects in D-meson production in pion-nucleon and proton-nucleon collisions are investigated within the recombination model. The coalescence of perturbatively created charm quarks with sea and valence quarks from projectile and target fragments is shown to be competitive in magnitude with standard fragmentation calculations at both central (small x_F) and forward rapidities. Corresponding flavor asymmetries for inclusive D-meson production are thus mostly generated on the (light-) parton distribution level, and turn out to be in reasonable overall agreement with available fixed-target data. Predictions for upcoming measurements at BNL RHIC are given.