Measurement of beauty production from dimuon events at HERA

TL;DR

This paper reports a measurement of beauty quark production at HERA using dimuon events, providing total and differential cross sections that test QCD predictions and improve understanding of beauty production mechanisms.

Contribution

The study presents the first comprehensive measurement of beauty production in ep collisions at HERA using dimuon events with extensive phase space coverage.

Findings

Total cross section measured as 13.9 ± 1.5 (stat.) +4.0 -4.3 (syst.) nb.

Differential cross sections and bbbar correlations are consistent with QCD models.

Results compare favorably with other measurements and theoretical predictions.

Abstract

Beauty production in events containing two muons in the final state has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 114 pb-1. A low transverse-momentum threshold for muon identification, in combination with the large rapidity coverage of the ZEUS muon system, gives access to almost the full phase space for beauty production. The total cross section for beauty production in ep collisions at sqrt(s)= 318 GeV has been measured to be sigma_tot(ep -> bbbar X) = 13.9 +- 1.5(stat.) +4.0 -4.3(syst.) nb. Differential cross sections and a measurement of bbbar correlations are also obtained, and compared to other beauty cross-section measurements, Monte Carlo models and next-to-leading-order QCD predictions.