Charm hadron production and hadronization in electron-nucleus collisions at the future Electron Ion Collider

One of the main physics goals of the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is to study the hadronization mechanism in high energy electron-proton and electron-nucleus collisions. In particular, measurement of charm hadron production will allow us to study heavy quark transport and hadronization inside the cold nuclear matter. Here we characterized the statistical significance of charm hadron measurements by reconstructing D⁰ mesons and Λ_c baryons. This was accomplished using interactions simulated with the BeAGLE and PYTHIA event generators factoring in the expected detector effects and luminosity of the EIC. As this measurement is highly sensitive to the efficiency of charm hadron selection cuts and detector characteristics, we carefully studied the optimal analysis selection criteria with the proposed detector designs for the EIC. In this poster we will present the projected precision of D⁰ meson and Λ_c baryon multiplicity measurements in electron-nucleus collisions relative to proton at the EIC, the differentiating power of related charm hadron measurements on existing hadronization models, and the implications on understanding nuclear modification mechanisms.