Fragmentation production of charmed hadrons in electron-positron annihilation

Processes involving the production of D* mesons and Λc baryons in electron-positron annihilation at the energies of 10.58 and 91.18 GeV are considered. At the energy of 10.58 GeV, the production of pairs of B mesons that is followed by their decay to charmed particles is analyzed along with direct charm production. The violation of scaling in the respective fragmentation functions is taken into account in the next-to-leading-logarithmic approximation of perturbative QCD. The required nonperturbative fragmentation functions are extracted numerically from experimental data obtained at B factories and are approximated by simple analytic expressions. It is shown that the difference in the nonperturbative fragmentation functions for transitions to mesons and baryons can readily be explained on the basis of the quark-counting rules.