Heavy-flavour hadro-production from fixed-target to collider energies

We review the hadro-production data presently available on open charm and beauty absolute production cross-sections, collected by experiments at CERN, DESY and Fermilab. The published charm production cross-section values are updated, in particular for the “time evolution” of the branching ratios. These measurements are compared to LO pQCD calculations, as a function of the collision energy, using recent parameterisations of the parton distribution functions. We then estimate, including nuclear effects on the parton densities, the charm and beauty production cross-sections relevant for measurements at SPS and RHIC energies, in proton–proton, proton–nucleus and nucleus–nucleus collisions. The calculations are also compared with measurements of single D and B kinematical distributions, and D D ¯ pair correlations. We finish with two brief comments, concerning the importance of beauty production as a feed-down source of J / ψ production, and open charm measurements performed using leptonic decays.