Finite-Mass Effects on Inclusive B-Meson Hadroproduction

TL;DR

This paper calculates B-meson production rates at intermediate transverse momentum, showing finite-mass effects moderately increase cross sections and diminish at higher p_T, with comparisons to experimental data validating the approach.

Contribution

It introduces a finite-mass scheme for NLO calculations of B-meson production, incorporating realistic fragmentation functions from e^+e^- data, improving upon zero-mass approximations.

Findings

Finite-mass effects increase cross section by about 20% at p_T=2 m_b.

Finite-mass effects decrease rapidly with increasing p_T.

Comparison with Tevatron data supports the finite-mass scheme's validity.

Abstract

We calculate the transverse-momentum (p_T) distribution for the inclusive hadroproduction of B mesons at intermediate values of p_T at next-to-leading order (NLO) in a dedicated finite-mass scheme using realistic non-perturbative fragmentation functions that are obtained through a global fit to e^+e^- data from CERN LEP1 and SLAC SLC exploiting their universality and scaling violations. We find that finite-mass effects moderately enhance the cross section, by about 20% at p_T = 2 m_b, and rapidly fade out with increasing value of p_T, so that the zero-mass prediction is reached. We also perform comparisons with recent ppbar data taken by the CDF Collaboration in run II at the Fermilab Tevatron and comment on the usefulness of the fixed-flavor-number scheme.