Evaluation of a baseline for the study of azimuthal correlations of charmed mesons in heavy-ion collisions using PYTHIA 8 and Herwig++ models

Measurements of azimuthal correlations of charmed mesons in high-energy heavy-ion collisions can shed light on transport properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma. The STAR experiment collected in 2014 and 2016 a large sample of Au+Au reactions at √(s_NN) = 200 GeV, making such a study possible. However, such a measurement in p + p collisions at the same energy is not feasible so far. To provide such a baseline, we report a model study of the azimuthal correlations between charmed mesons in p + p collisions at √(s) = 200 GeV, 500 GeV and 1.96 TeV. We used two Monte Carlo generators, PYTHIA 8 and Herwig++. We compare their predictions and validate them against available data from the STAR and CDF experiments to provide a reliable p + p baseline for the correlation studies in heavy-ion collisions at experiments at RHIC. We also discuss prospects for such measurements.