Contributions from weak-interaction channels to inclusive hadron spectra at TeV energies

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential impact of weak-interaction channels, specifically W and Z boson exchange diagrams, on inclusive charged hadron production at TeV energies, finding their effects are negligible at current collider energies.

Contribution

It provides a leading order perturbative QCD analysis including electroweak channels to estimate their contribution to hadron yields at TeV energies.

Findings

Electroweak channels contribute more in p+{ar p} collisions than in p+p.

The contributions are close to negligible at current collider energies.

Energy dependence and transverse momentum distribution structures are analyzed.

Abstract

At the FERMILAB TEVATRON and CERN LHC accelerators partonic processes reach such a high energy region, where the weak interactions could enter into consideration in the hadron yields through the opening of resonant W and Z exchange diagrams. We investigate these contributions to inclusive charged hadron production in p+p and p+{\bar p} reactions at a few TeV energies, and compare our results to existing CDF and CMS data. We perform a leading order perturbative QCD calculation and include electroweak channels to estimate the order of magnitude of charged hadron excess. The energy dependence of hadron production and the fine structure of transverse momentum distributions are investigated. As expected, in p+ {\bar p} collisions electroweak channels yield much larger contribution, than in p+p collisions. However, these types of contributions remains close to be negligible at the available accelerator energies.