Charm production and prompt neutrino fluxes in beam dump and collider experiments

This dissertation deals with the neutrino fluxes that come from charm decays in hadronic collisions in beam dump and collider experiments. The specific focus is on the beam dump experiment SHiP (Search for Hidden Particles) and the collider experiment LHC (Large Hadron Collider). Based on the HVQMNRPHO computer program, the next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD (pQCD) calculation is performed for charm quark. Two nonperturbative effects, the initial transverse momentum and fragmentation are modeled by a Gaussian function and the Peterson fragmentation function, respectively. The parameters in these two models are determined by comparisons with the experimental data. The distributions of charm hadrons $D_s^-$, $D^-$, $D^0$ and $\Lambda_c^-$ are thus obtained. By considering the full 3-Dimensional kinematics of the charm hadron decays in the hadron rest frame and then Lorentz transforming to the lab frame, the tau neutrino and muon neutrino fluxes are obtained. The number of neutrino charged current (CC) events at the neutrino detector are evaluated for SHiP and the LHC. The NLO pQCD evaluation predicts about 300 tau neutrino and antineutrino events for SHiP which is much higher than the number of tau neutrino events observed already at OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) and DONuT (Direct observation of the nu tau), and thus provides the potential to study the tau neutrino interactions with high statistics. An estimate of the possible intrinsic charm production has been performed for SHiP which may make its presence in the hadron and neutrino specta. Hundreds of tau neutrino and antineutrino events per year per kilogram of lead are achievable for a very far-forward neutrino detector at the LHC.