High-energy QCD dynamics from bottom flavor fragmentation at the Hi-Lumi LHC

Francesco Giovanni Celiberto

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-12704-x

2023 Impact factor 4.2

Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2024) 84: 384
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-12704-x

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

High-energy QCD dynamics from bottom flavor fragmentation at the Hi-Lumi LHC

Francesco Giovanni Celiberto^a

Departamento de Física y Matemáticas, Universidad de Alcalá (UAH), Campus Universitario, Alcalá de Henares, 28805, Madrid, Spain

^a francesco.celiberto@uah.es

Received: 4 January 2024
Accepted: 20 March 2024
Published online: 10 April 2024

Abstract

We study the inclusive production of hadrons with bottom flavor at the LHC and its luminosity upgrade. We describe the collinear fragmentation of singly b-flavored hadrons, B mesons and $Λ_{b}$ $\Lambda _b$ baryons, via the KKSS07 determination of fragmentation functions, while for charmed B mesons, $B_{c} (^{1} S_{0})$ $$B_c(^1S_0)$$ and $B_{c} (^{3} S_{1})$ $$B_c(^3S_1)$$ particles, we employ the novel ZCFW22 set, built on the basis of state-of-the-art nonrelativistic QCD inputs. We use the Jethad multimodular working environment to analyze rapidity and transverse-momentum distributions for observables sensitive to the associated emission of two hadrons or a hadron-plus-jet system. Our reference formalism is the $NLL / {NLO}^{+}$ $\mathrm{NLL/NLO^+}$ hybrid collinear and high-energy factorization, where the standard collinear description is improved by the inclusions of energy logarithms resummed up to the next-to-leading approximation and beyond. We provide corroborating evidence that b-flavor emissions act as fair stabilizers of the high-energy resummation, thus serving as valuable tools for precision studies of high-energy QCD. As a bonus, we highlight that the predicted production-rate hierarchy between noncharmed b-hadrons and charmed $B_{c} (^{1} S_{0})$ $$B_c(^1S_0)$$ mesons is in line with recent LHCb estimates. This serves as simultaneous benchmark both for the hybrid factorization and for the single-parton fragmentation mechanism based on initial-scale inputs calculated via the nonrelativistic QCD effective theory.

© The Author(s) 2024

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