Fragmentation functions for heavy-light mesons, like the charmed $D$, $D^{*}$ mesons, are proposed. They rest on next-to-leading QCD perturbative fragmentation functions for heavy quarks, with the addition of a nonperturbative term describing phenomenologically the quark $\to$ meson transition. The cross section for production of large $p_T$ $D$, $D^{*}$ mesons at the Fermilab Tevatron is evaluated in this framework.

• Received 2 August 1996

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.55.2736