  Charm production from the quark-gluon plasma created in the midrapidity of
central heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is studied in
the next-to-leading order in QCD. Using a schematic longitudinally
boost-invariant and transversally expanding fire-cylinder model, we find that
charm production could be appreciably enhanced at LHC as a result of the high
temperature that is expected to be reached in the produced quark-gluon plasma.
Sensitivities of our results to the number of charm quark pairs produced from
initial hard scattering, the initial thermalization time and temperature of the
quark-gluon plasma, and the charm quark mass are also studied.
