Abstract:
The leading particle effect in charm hadroproduction is an
enhancement of the cross section for a charmed hadron D in
the forward direction of the beam when the beam hadron has a
valence parton in common with the D. The large D+/D-
asymmetry observed by the E791 experiment is an example of
this phenomenon. We show that the heavy-quark recombination
mechanism provides an economical explanation for this
effect. In particular, the D+/D- asymmetry can be fit
reasonably well using a single parameter whose value is
consistent with a recent determination from charm
photoproduction.