Inclusive production of heavy-flavored hadrons at NLO in the GM-VFNS

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent theoretical advances in modeling heavy-flavored hadron production at NLO within the GM-VFNS, highlighting finite-mass effects, fragmentation functions, and comparisons with experimental data.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive update on the application of the GM-VFNS to heavy-flavored hadron production, including finite-mass effects and improved data descriptions.

Findings

Finite-mass effects influence D-meson fragmentation functions.

The fixed-flavor-number scheme describes B-meson production well.

Up-to-date PDFs and coupling constants improve theoretical predictions.

Abstract

We summarize recent progress in the theoretical description of heavy-flavored-hadron inclusive production at next-to-leading order in the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme. Specifically, we discuss the influence of finite-mass effects on the determination D-meson fragmentation functions from a global fit to e^+e^- annihilation data and on the transverse-momentum distribution of B-meson hadroproduction. We also demonstrate that the fixed-flavor-number scheme, implemented with up-to-date parton density functions and strong-coupling constant, provides a surprisingly good description of B-meson data from run II at the Fermilab Tevatron.