Measurement of beauty photoproduction using decays into muons in dijet events at HERA

TL;DR

This paper reports a measurement of beauty quark production in dijet events at HERA, utilizing muon detection and lifetime information to compare experimental results with QCD predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method combining muon transverse momentum and lifetime data to identify beauty quarks in photoproduction events at HERA.

Findings

Data agree with next-to-leading-order QCD predictions.

Measured cross sections match previous results.

Enhanced identification method improves beauty detection accuracy.

Abstract

Beauty photoproduction in dijet events has been measured at HERA with the ZEUS detector using an integrated luminosity of 126 pb-1. Beauty was identified in events with a muon in the final state by using the transverse momentum of the muon relative to the closest jet. Lifetime information from the silicon vertex detector was also used; the impact parameter of the muon with respect to the primary vertex was exploited to discriminate between signal and background. Cross sections for beauty production as a function of the muon and the jet variables as well as dijet correlations are compared to QCD predictions and to previous measurements. The data are well described by predictions from next-to-leading-order QCD.