The FMNRxPYTHIA interface for Heavy Quark production at HERA

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel interface combining FMNR and PYTHIA to accurately predict heavy quark production cross sections at HERA, incorporating NLO QCD calculations with full hadronization and decay modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a new method linking NLO QCD predictions with PYTHIA for detailed heavy flavor simulation at HERA.

Findings

Data and NLO predictions are consistent at visible and b-quark levels.

The method successfully models full hadronization and decay chains.

Provides a reliable tool for heavy quark production analysis.

Abstract

A method to calculate heavy flavor visible-level cross sections at Next-to-Leading Order (NLO) in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), based on an interface of the FMNR program to PYTHIA, is described. It uses the NLO prediction at quark level provided by FMNR, with a statistical reduction procedure (REDSTAT) that allows a link to PYTHIA 6.2 to be made, from where the description of the full hadron fragmentation and decay chain is obtained. The method is applied to ep -> b bbar X -> D* mu X and mu+ mu- X final states at HERA. Comparisons of the data and NLO cross sections at visible and b-quark level were found to be consistent.