Discriminating the heavy jet production mechanisms in associated Z + heavy flavor events at the LHC

S. P. Baranov; A. Bermudez Martinez; H. Jung; A. V. Lipatov; M. A. Malyshev; S. Taheri Monfared

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-10104-7

2023 Impact factor 4.2

Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2022) 82: 157
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-10104-7

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Discriminating the heavy jet production mechanisms in associated Z + heavy flavor events at the LHC

S. P. Baranov¹, A. Bermudez Martinez², H. Jung², A. V. Lipatov³^,4, M. A. Malyshev³^e and S. Taheri Monfared²

¹ Lebedev Physics Institute, Moscow, Russia
² Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg, Germany
³ Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
⁴ Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, 141980, Dubna, Moscow region, Russia

^e malyshev@theory.sinp.msu.ru

Received: 13 November 2021
Accepted: 7 February 2022
Published online: 18 February 2022

Abstract

We reconsider the associated Z boson and charm or beauty jet production at the LHC by paying special attention to the formation dynamics of heavy jets. Two different approaches are studied: first one, where heavy quarks are produced in the hard scattering subprocesses, implemented in the Monte-Carlo generator pegasus, and another method, where the hard scattering is calculated at NLO with MadGraph5_aMC@NLO and TMD parton shower is included (implemented in the Monte-Carlo generator Cascade3). We compare the predictions obtained in both schemes with latest experimental data for associated $Z + b$ $$Z + b$$ production cross sections and the relative production rate $σ (Z + c) / σ (Z + b)$ $\sigma (Z + c)/\sigma (Z + b)$ collected by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV. We introduce two kinematic observables (denoted as $z_{b}$ $$z_b$$ and $p_{T}^{rel}$ $p_T^\mathrm{rel}$ ) which can be used to discriminate between the heavy jet production mechanisms. Using these variables we trace the shape of the simulated b-jet events and recommend that these observables be taken into consideration in the forthcoming experimental analyses.

© The Author(s) 2022

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