Investigating D0 meson production in p-Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV with a multi-phase transport model

We study the production of D-0 meson in p+p and p-Pb collisions using the improved AMPT model considering both coalescence and independent fragmentation of charm quarks after the Cronin broadening is included. After a detailed discussion of the improvements implemented in the AMPT model for heavy quark production, we show that the modified AMPT model can provide a good description of D-0 meson spectra in p-Pb collisions, the Q(pPb) data at different centralities and R-pPb data in both mid- and forward (backward) rapidities. We also studied the effects of nuclear shadowing and parton cascade on the rapidity dependence of D-0 meson production and R-pPb. Our results indicate that using the same strength of the Cronin effect (i.e delta value) as that obtained from the mid-rapidity data leads to a considerable overestimation of the D-0 meson spectra and R-pPb data at high p(T) in the backward rapidity. As a result, the delta is determined via a chi(2 )fitting of the R-pPb data across various rapidities. This work lays the foundation for a better understanding of cold-nuclear-matter (CNM) effects in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.