Production of , , and mesons in strong interactions*

Abstract Using the inelastic scattering of charmed strange mesons by open-charm mesons in hadronic matter produced in Pb-Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, we study the production of , , and mesons. Master rate equations are established for inelastic scattering. The scattering is caused by quark interchange in association with color interactions between all constituent pairs in different mesons. We consider fifty-one reactions between charmed strange and open-charm mesons. Unpolarized cross sections for the reactions are obtained from a temperature-dependent interquark potential. The temperature dependence of the cross sections causes the contributions of the reactions to the production of , , and to change with decreasing temperature during the evolution of hadronic matter. For central Pb-Pb collisions at TeV, the master rate equations reveal that the number density of is larger than that of , whose number density is larger than that of .