Investigating charm production and fragmentation via azimuthal correlations of prompt D mesons with charged particles in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV

Angular correlations of heavy-flavour and charged particles in high-energy proton–proton collisions are sensitive to the production mechanisms of heavy quarks and to their fragmentation as well as hadronisation processes. The measurement of the azimuthal-correlation function of prompt D mesons with charged particles in proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ALICE detector is reported, considering ${D}^{0}$ , ${D}^{+}$ , and ${D}^{\ast +}$ mesons in the transverse-momentum interval $3<{p}_{T}<36$ GeV/ $c$ at midrapidity ( $|y|<0.5$ ), and charged particles with ${p}_{T}>0.3$ GeV/ $c$ and pseudorapidity $|\eta |<0.8$ . This measurement has an improved precision and provides an extended transverse-momentum coverage compared to previous ALICE measurements at lower energies. The study is also performed as a function of the charged-particle multiplicity, showing no modifications of the correlation function with multiplicity within uncertainties. The properties and the transverse-momentum evolution of the near- and away-side correlation peaks are studied and compared with predictions from various Monte Carlo event generators. Among those considered, PYTHIA8 and POWHEG+PYTHIA8 provide the best description of the measured observables. The obtained results can provide guidance on tuning the generators.