Beauty photoproduction using decays into electrons at HERA

TL;DR

This paper reports on the measurement of beauty quark photoproduction at HERA using electron decays, providing total and differential cross sections that test QCD predictions and Monte Carlo models.

Contribution

It presents the first measurement of beauty photoproduction via electron decays at HERA, with detailed cross section results compared to theoretical models.

Findings

Measured total and differential cross sections for beauty and charm production.

Found agreement between measurements and next-to-leading-order QCD calculations.

Provided insights into heavy quark production mechanisms at HERA.

Abstract

Photoproduction of beauty quarks in events with two jets and an electron associated with one of the jets has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 120 pb-1. The fractions of events containing b quarks, and also of events containing c quarks, were extracted from a likelihood fit using variables sensitive to electron identification as well as to semileptonic decays. Total and differential cross sections for beauty and charm production were measured and compared with next-to-leading-order QCD calculations and Monte Carlo models.