Production of D and B mesons and their semileptonic decays

TL;DR

This paper models the production and decay of D and B mesons in proton-proton collisions at RHIC, providing detailed predictions for semileptonic decay correlations and rates, and comparing them with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive calculation of heavy meson production and decay correlations using $k_{t}$-factorization and recent decay data, enhancing understanding of nonphotonic electron sources.

Findings

Good agreement with PHENIX data on semileptonic decays

Detailed predictions for charm and bottom quark pair distributions

Estimation of open charm and bottom production rates

Abstract

We have calculated the kinematical correlations between charged leptons from semileptonic decays of open charm/bottom as well as leptons produced in the Drell-Yan mechanism in proton-proton collisions at BNL RHIC. Presented production rates for open charm and bottom were estimated by a detailed analysis of so-called nonphotonic electrons. The distributions for charm and bottom quarks pairs are calculated in the $k_{t}$-factorization approach with the help of the Kwieci{\'n}ski unintegrated parton distributions. The hadronization of heavy quarks is done by means of Peterson et al. fragmentation function. The semileptonic decay functions are found by fitting recent semileptonic data obtained by the CLEO and BABAR. We get good description of recent PHENIX data.