On the quark component in prompt photon and electroweak gauge boson production at high energies

TL;DR

This paper investigates the role of quark components in prompt photon and electroweak gauge boson production at high energies using the kt-factorization approach, highlighting their significance at Tevatron and LHC energies.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of quark contributions in gauge boson production within the kt-factorization framework, emphasizing their importance in high-energy collisions.

Findings

Quark components significantly influence production rates at Tevatron and LHC.

Theoretical results align well with experimental data from D0 and CDF.

Quark contributions are crucial in the early evolution stages of the process.

Abstract

In the framework of the kt-factorization approach, we study the production of prompt photons and electroweak gauge bosons in high energy proton-(anti)proton collisions at modern colliders. Our consideration is based on the amplitude for the production of a single photon or W/Z boson associated with a quark pair in the fusion of two off-shell gluons. The quark component is taken into account separately using the quark-gluon scaterring and quark-antiquark annihilation QCD subprocesses. Special attention is put on the contributions from the quarks involved into the earlier steps of the evolution cascade. Using the Kimber-Martin-Ryskin formalism, we simulate this component and demonstrate that it plays an important role at both the Tevatron and LHC energies. Our theoretical results are compared with recent experimental data taken by the D0 and CDF collaborations at the Tevatron.