Description
The production of charm quarks and charmonium states in fixed-target collisions provides a powerful probe of QCD in cold and hot nuclear matter. The LHCb experiment has pioneered a novel fixed-target program, now enhanced for Run 3 with the SMOG2 system, which features improved gas confinement and the capability to inject non-noble gases. This upgrade significantly increases fixed-target luminosity, enabling high-statistics studies of charm production in proton-nucleus (pA) and lead-nucleus (PbA) collisions. Charm production measurements in this environment offer unique insights into cold nuclear matter effects, such as nuclear PDF modifications, parton energy loss, and intrinsic charm contributions, across small and large collision systems at the same center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair (√sNN). Additionally, these measurements provide an opportunity to investigate potential signatures of hot nuclear matter effects at lower energies. In this talk, we will present new results on open and hidden charm production using the first dataset collected with SMOG2. We will also discuss future prospects for charm studies in PbAr collisions, which will further refine our understanding of QCD in nuclear environments.
