Diffractive production of quark-antiquark pairs

TL;DR

This paper investigates the process of diffractive production of heavy quark-antiquark pairs in proton-proton collisions, deriving cross sections and distributions relevant for LHC energies, and compares charm and bottom production ratios.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed theoretical framework for calculating diffractive heavy quark pair production, including impact parameter and momentum space amplitudes, and provides numerical predictions for LHC conditions.

Findings

Calculated cross sections and distributions for charm and bottom quark pairs.

Analyzed the ratio of bottom-to-charm production as a function of kinematic variables.

Provided predictions using various unintegrated gluon distributions from literature.

Abstract

We discuss diffractive dissociation of gluons into heavy quark pairs. The particular mechanism is similar to the diffractive dissociation of virtual photons into quarks. The amplitude for the $g p \to Q \bar Q p$ is derived in the impact parameter and momentum space. The cross section for single diffractive $p p \to Q \bar Q p X$ is calculated as a convolution of the elementary cross section and gluon distribution in the proton. Integrated cross section and differential distributions in transverse momentum and rapidity of the charm and bottom quark and antiquark, etc. are calculated for the nominal LHC energy for different unintegrated gluon distributions from the literature. The ratio of the bottom-to-charm cross sections are shown and discussed as a function of several kinematical variables.