Open Charm Production in an Equilibrating Parton Plasma

Open charm production during the equilibration of a gluon dominated parton plasma is calculated, with both the time-dependent temperature and parton densities given by a set of rate equations. Including pre-thermal production, the total enhancement of open charm production over the initial gluon fusion depends sensitively on the initial parton density and the effective temperature. The dependence of the pre-thermal charm production on the space-momentum correlation in the initial parton phase-space distribution is also discussed.Comment: 23 pages REVTEX, 7 uuencoded postscript figures include