Eur. Phys. J. C (2011) 71: 1766
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1766-3

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

W boson inclusive decays to quarkonium and meson at the LHC

¹ College of Physical Sciences, Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, YuQuan Road 19A, Beijing, 100049, China
² Theoretical Physics Center for Science Facilities (TPCSF), CAS, YuQuan Road 19B, Beijing, 100049, China

^* e-mail: yangds@gucas.ac.cn

Received: 23 March 2011
Revised: 18 August 2011
Published online: 11 October 2011

Abstract

In this paper, the production rates of quarkonia η _c , J/ψ, η _b , ϒ and mesons through W ⁺ boson decay at the LHC are calculated, at the leading order in both the QCD coupling α _s and in v, the typical velocity of the heavy quark inside mesons. It shows that a sizable number of quarkonia and mesons from W ⁺ boson decay will be produced at the LHC. Comparison with the predictions by using quark fragmentation mechanism is also discussed. Results show that, for the charmonium production through W ⁺ decay, the difference between predictions by the fragmentation mechanism and complete leading order calculation is around 3%, and it is insensitive to the uncertainties of theoretical parameters; however, for the bottomonium and productions, the difference cannot be ignored as the fragmentation mechanism is less applicable here due to the relatively large ratio m _b /m _w .