Study of flavor dependence of the baryon-to-meson ratio in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV

The production cross sections of ${\mathrm{D}}^0$ and ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\mathrm{c}}^{+}$ hadrons originating from beauty-hadron decays (i.e. non-prompt) were measured for the first time at midrapidity ($\mathrm{\mid }y\mathrm{\mid }<0.5$) by the ALICE Collaboration in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV. They are described within uncertainties by perturbative QCD calculations employing the fragmentation fractions of beauty quarks to baryons measured at forward rapidity by the LHCb Collaboration. The $\mathrm{b}\bar{\mathrm{b}}$ production cross section per unit of rapidity at midrapidity, estimated from these measurements, is $\mathrm{d}{\sigma }_{\mathrm{b}\bar{\mathrm{b}}}\mathrm{/}\mathrm{d}y{\mathrm{\mid }}_{\mathrm{\mid }y\mathrm{\mid }<0.5}=83.1\pm 3.5(\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{.})\pm 5.4(\mathrm{s}\mathrm{y}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{.}{)}_{-3.2}^{+12.3}(\mathrm{e}\mathrm{x}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{.})\mu$b. The baryon-to-meson ratios are computed to investigate the hadronization mechanism of beauty quarks. The non-prompt ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\mathrm{c}}^{+}\mathrm{/}{\mathrm{D}}^0$ production ratio has a similar trend to the one measured for the promptly produced charmed particles and to the p$\mathrm{/}{\pi }^{+}$ and $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{/}{\mathrm{K}}_{\mathrm{S}}^0$ ratios, suggesting a similar baryon-formation mechanism among light, strange, charm, and beauty hadrons. The $p_{\mathrm{T}}$-integrated non-prompt ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\mathrm{c}}\mathrm{/}{\mathrm{D}}^0$ ratio is found to be significantly higher than the one measured in e${}^{+}$e${}^{-}$ collisions.