The inclusive photoproduction of heavy mesons in ultraperipheral pPb and PbPb collisions at the LHC energies is investigated considering the color dipole S-matrix formalism and assuming distinct models for the unintegrated gluon distribution, based on different assumptions for the description of the QCD dynamics. In particular, predictions for the B0-meson photoproduction are presented here for the first time. The study of the D0-meson photoproduction is revisited by estimating the impact of the treatment of the heavy charm fragmentation on the predictions and extended for pPb collisions. Moreover, the contribution associated with the b→D0 transition is estimated. Our results indicate that a future experimental analysis of the heavy meson photoproduction will provide important constrains on the description of the hadronic structure at high energies.
@article{arxiv.2603.17612,
title = {Inclusive heavy meson photoproduction in $pPb$ and $PbPb$ collisions},
author = {Victor P. Goncalves and Luana Santana and Wolfgang Schäfer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.17612},
year = {2026}
}