Heavy-quark pair production in polarized photon-photon collisions at next-to-leading order: Fully integrated total cross sections

TL;DR

This paper provides analytic expressions for the total cross sections of heavy-quark pair production in polarized photon-photon collisions at next-to-leading order, relevant for collider experiments involving b and t quarks.

Contribution

It presents the first fully integrated analytic formulas for heavy-quark pair production cross sections in polarized photon collisions at NLO in QCD.

Findings

Analytic formulas for total cross sections at different photon spin states.

Application to bar{b} and tar{t} production processes.

Implications for background estimation in Higgs boson searches.

Abstract

We consider the production of heavy-quark pairs in the collisions of polarized and unpolarized on-shell photons and present, in analytic form, the fully integrated total cross sections for total photon spins $J_z=0, \pm 2$ at next-to-leading-order in QCD. Phenomenological applications include $b\bar b$ production, which represents an irreducible background to standard-model intermediate-mass Higgs-boson production, as well as $t\bar t$ production.