A bstract The prompt production of Λ c + baryons is studied in proton-lead collisions collected with the LHCb detector at the LHC. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 1.58 nb −1 recorded at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of $$ \sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02 $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:msqrt> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>5.02</mml:mn> </mml:math> TeV. Measurements of the differential cross-section and the forwardbackward production ratio are reported for Λ c + baryons with transverse momenta in the range 2 < p T < 10 GeV/c and rapidities in the ranges 1.5 < y ∗ < 4.0 and −4.5 < y ∗ < −2.5 in the nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass system. The ratio of cross-sections of Λ c + baryons and D 0 mesons is also reported. The results are compared with next-to-leading order calculations that use nuclear parton distribution functions.
