W Boson Inclusive Decays to Quarkonium at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper calculates the production rates of various quarkonia from W boson decays at the LHC, showing significant production and comparing different theoretical models, with implications for experimental detection.

Contribution

It provides leading-order calculations of quarkonium production from W decays and compares the fragmentation mechanism with full calculations, highlighting their applicability limits.

Findings

Significant quarkonium production from W decays at the LHC.

Fragmentation mechanism agrees within 3% for charmonium but less accurate for bottomonium and B_c states.

Results inform experimental searches and theoretical modeling of W boson decays.

Abstract

In this paper, the production rates of quarkonia eta_c, J/psi, eta_b, Upsilon, B_c and B_c^* through W boson decay at the LHC are calculated, at the leading order in both the QCD coupling constant and in v, the typical velocity of the heavy quark inside of mesons. It shows that a sizable number of quarkonia from W boson decay will be produced at the LHC. Comparison with the predictions by using quark fragmentation mechanism is also discussed. Results show that, for the charmonium production through W decay, the difference between predictions by the fragmentation mechanism and complete leading order calculation is around 3%, and it is insensitive to the uncertainties of theoretical parameters; however, for the bottomonium and B_c^(*) productions, the difference cannot be ignored as the fragmentation mechanism is less applicable here due to the relatively large ratio mb/mw.