No Arabic abstract
We review the hadro-production data presently available on open charm and beauty absolute production cross-sections, collected by experiments at CERN, DESY and Fermilab. The published charm production cross-section values are updated, in particular for the time evolution of the branching ratios. These measurements are compared to LO pQCD calculations, as a function of the collision energy, using recent parametrisations of the parton distribution functions. We then estimate, including nuclear effects of the parton densities, the charm and beauty production cross-sections relevant for measurements at SPS and RHIC energies, in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. The calculations are also compared with measurements of single D and B kinematical distributions, and DDbar pair correlations. We finish with two brief comments, concerning the importance of beauty production as a feed-down source of J/psi production, and open charm measurements performed using leptonic decays.
We compute the energy dependence of the P_T-integrated cross section of directly produced quarkonia in pp collisions at next-to-leading order (NLO), namely up to alpha_s^3, within nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD). Our analysis is based on the idea that the P_T-integrated and the P_T-differential cross sections can be treated as two different observables. The colour-octet NRQCD parameters needed to predict the P_T-integrated yield can thus be extracted from the fits of the P_T-differential cross sections at mid and large P_T. For the first time, the total cross section is evaluated in NRQCD at full NLO accuracy using the recent NLO fits of the P_T-differential yields at RHIC, the Tevatron and the LHC. Both the normalisation and the energy dependence of the J/psi, psi and Upsilon(1S), we obtained, are in disagreement with the data irrespective of the fit method. The same is true if one uses CEM-like colour-octet NRQCD parameters. If, on the contrary, one disregards the colour-octet contribution, the existing data in the TeV range are well described by the alpha_s^3 contribution in the colour-singlet model --which, at alpha_s^4, however shows an unphysical energy dependence. A similar observation is made for eta(c,b). This calls for a full NNLO or for a resummation of the initial-state radiation in this channel. In any case, past claims that colour-octet transitions are dominantly responsible for low-P_T quarkonium production are not supported by our results. This may impact the interpretation of quarkonium suppression in high-energy proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions.
We present an analysis of hadroproduction of $J/psi$ and $psi(2S)$ at fixed-target energies in the framework of non-relativistic QCD (NRQCD). Using both pion- and proton-induced data, a new determination of the color-octet long-distance matrix elements (LDMEs) is obtained. Compared with previous results, the contributions from the $q bar{q}$ and color-octet processes are significantly enhanced, especially at lower energies. A good agreement between the pion-induced $J/psi$ production data and NRQCD calculations using the newly obtained LDMEs is achieved. We find that the pion-induced charmonium production data are sensitive to the gluon density of pions, and favor pion PDFs with relatively large gluon contents at large $x$.
In view of the good agreement between the LHCb prompt-eta(c) data at sqrt(s)=7 and 8 TeV and the NLO colour-singlet model predictions --i.e. the leading v^2 NRQCD contribution--, we provide predictions in the LHCb acceptance for the forthcoming 13 TeV analysis bearing on data taken during the LHC Run2. We also provide predictions for sqrt(s)=115 GeV for proton-hydrogen collisions in the fixed-target mode which could be studied during the LHC Run3. Our predictions are complemented by a full theoretical uncertainty analysis. In addition to cross section predictions, we elaborate on the uncertainties on the p bar-p branching ratio --necessary for data-theory comparison-- and discuss other usable branching fractions for future studies.
The COMPASS collaboration published precise data on production cross section of charged hadrons in lepton-hadron semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering, showing almost an order of magnitude larger than next-to-leading order QCD calculations when $P_{h_T}$ and $z_h$ are sufficiently large. We explore the role of power corrections to the theoretical calculations, and quantitatively demonstrate that the power corrections are extremely important for these data when the final-state multiplicity is low and the production kinematics is near the edge of phase space. Our finding motivates more detailed studies on power corrections for upcoming experiments at Jefferson Lab, as well as the future Electron-Ion Collider.
A unified QCD formulation of leptoproduction of massive quarks in charged current and neutral current processes is described. This involves adopting consistent factorization and renormalization schemes which encompass both vector-boson-gluon-fusion (flavor creation) and vector-boson-massive-quark-scattering (flavor excitation) production mechanisms. It provides a framework which is valid from the threshold for producing the massive quark (where gluon-fusion is dominant) to the very high energy regime when the typical energy scale mu is much larger than the quark mass m_Q (where the quark-scattering should be prevalent). This approach effectively resums all large logarithms of the type (alpha_s(mu) log(mu^2/m_Q^2)^n which limit the validity of existing fixed-order calculations to the region mu ~ O(m_Q). We show that the (massive) quark-scattering contribution (after subtraction of overlaps) is important in most parts of the (x, Q) plane except near the threshold region. We demonstrate that the factorization scale dependence of the structure functions calculated in this approach is substantially less than those obtained in the fixed-order calculations, as one would expect from a more consistent formulation.