CERN Accelerating science

In this thesis, the production of heavy-flavour hadrons containing a charm quark in pp, p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions will be discussed. Various hadronisation models that are implemented in commonly used event generators, such as PYTHIA8 (including QCD-CR models), HERWIG7 (including baryonic clustering models) and EPOS4, are inspected. With this background, Monte-Carlo generated data are compared with ALICE experimental results. The RIVET framework is mainly used for the study, allowing us to perform a systematic, easy-to-implement and standardised comparison between simulated data and measurements. A selection of comparisons between simulated data and recent measurements on meson-to-meson, baryon-to-meson and baryon-to-baryon production ratios is presented. The default PYTHIA8 Monash tune and HERWIG7, both tuned on measurements in e$^{+}$e$^{-}$ collisions, significantly underestimate charmed baryons production in pp collisions. On the other hand, both PYTHIA8 QCD-CR Mode 2 and Mode 0 describe $\Lambda_{\rm c}^{+}$ production well due to the formation of string junctions and string fragmentation mechanisms. Both tunes overestimate the production of $\Sigma_{\rm c}(2455)$ baryons significantly. Furthermore, they do not adequately describe ratios between pseudoscalar and vector D-mesons. For this reason, a parameterization-based tuning is performed on the PYTHIA8 QCD-CR Mode 2 tune, using the Apprentice framework, for the StringFlav:mesonCvector and StringFlav:probQQ1toQQ0join flavour selection parameters. The minimization of the goodness-of-fit measure was performed with the Truncated Newton method and a Bayesian inference technique. The predictions from PYTHIA8 CR Mode 2 with the tuned parameters are significantly improved for the D-meson ratios and $\Sigma_{\rm c}$ spectra, now describing the measurements within uncertainties. Due to the absence of strangeness enhancement mechanisms in QCD-CR tunes, the production of $\Xi_{\rm c}$-baryons is still largely underestimated. The production of $\Xi_{\rm c}$-baryons is better described by EPOS4 including a full core-corona procedure and hadronic rescattering mechanisms. Similarly, ratios between prompt D-mesons including strangeness are best described by EPOS4. The production of charmed hadrons in heavy-ion collisions is studied with PYTHIA8 using Angantyr, without assuming the creation of a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). We observe an enhancement of baryon production in highly string-dense environments by implementing beyond-leading color effects in the hadronization of individual sub-collisions.