Photon plus heavy quark production in high energy collisions within the target rest frame formalism

TL;DR

This paper applies the target rest frame formalism to analyze photon plus heavy quark production in high-energy hadronic collisions, exploring its dependence on kinematic variables and comparing with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed application of the target rest frame formalism to photon + heavy quark production, highlighting the sensitivity of the photon transverse momentum spectrum to the color dipole scattering amplitude.

Findings

Photon transverse momentum spectrum is a sensitive probe of color dipole scattering.

Theoretical results agree with Tevatron measurements at 1.96 TeV.

Analysis extends to proton-proton and proton-lead collisions at LHC energies.

Abstract

We apply the target rest frame formalism to photon + heavy quark production cross section in hadronic collisions at high energies. We investigate the dependence of the production cross section on the photon and quark rapidities and transverse momenta. It is shown that the photon transverse momentum spectrum is a sensitive probe of color dipole scattering amplitude. The theoretical results are compared to Tevatron measurements of the differential \gamma + c + X and \gamma + b + X production cross sections at 1.96 TeV. An analysis for proton-proton and proton-lead collisions at the LHC regime is also performed.