Nonphotonic electrons at RHIC within $k_t$-factorization approach and with experimental semileptonic decay functions

TL;DR

This paper models nonphotonic electron production at RHIC using $k_t$-factorization, incorporating recent decay data, and compares results with experimental measurements, revealing good agreement at high transverse momenta but discrepancies at low momenta.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed $k_t$-factorization approach with updated decay functions to better describe nonphotonic electron production at RHIC.

Findings

Good agreement with data at large transverse momenta

Discrepancies at small transverse momenta suggest missing mechanisms

Uses multiple unintegrated gluon distributions from literature

Abstract

We discuss production of nonphotonic electrons in proton-proton scattering at RHIC. The distributions in rapidity and transverse momentum of charm and bottom quarks/antiquarks are calculated in the $k_t$-factorization approach. We use different unintegrated gluon distributions from the literature. The hadronization of heavy quarks is done by means of Peterson and Braaten et al. fragmentation functions. The semileptonic decay functions are found by fitting recent semileptonic data obtained by the CLEO and BABAR collaborations. We get good description of the data at large transverse momenta of electrons and find a missing strength concentrated at small transverse momenta of electrons. Plausible missing mechanisms are discussed.