Summary: | We consider the simultaneous production of two heavy-flavoured hadrons – particularly D mesons – at the LHC. We base our calculations on collinearly factorized QCD at next-to-leading order, using the contemporary parton distribution functions and D-meson fragmentation functions. The contributions of double-parton scatterings are included in the approximation of independent partonic interactions. Our framework benchmarks well with the available proton-proton data from the LHCb collaboration giving us confidence to make predictions for proton-lead collisions. Our results indicate that the double D-meson production in proton-lead collisions should be measurable at the LHCb kinematics with the already collected Run-II data, and should provide evidence for double-parton scattering at perturbative scales with a nuclear target. Keywords: Open heavy-flavour production, Double-parton scattering, Proton-nucleus scattering, Perturbative QCD
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