Single- and central-diffractive production of open charm and bottom mesons at the LHC: theoretical predictions and experimental capabilities

TL;DR

This paper provides theoretical predictions for diffractive production of open charm and bottom mesons at the LHC, analyzing cross sections, distributions, and experimental detection capabilities within the Ingelman-Schlein model.

Contribution

It introduces detailed calculations of diffractive meson production at the LHC using the Ingelman-Schlein model with absorption corrections, incorporating recent diffractive structure functions and reggeon exchanges.

Findings

Predicted differential cross sections for $D$ and $B$ mesons.

Assessed detector acceptance for ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb.

Analyzed the impact of reggeon exchanges on diffractive production.

Abstract

We discuss diffractive production of open charm and bottom mesons at the LHC. The differential cross sections for single- and central-diffractive mechanisms for $c\bar c$ and $b\bar b$ pair production are calculated in the framework of the Ingelman-Schlein model corrected for absorption effects. In this approach one assumes that the pomeron has a well defined partonic structure, and that the hard process takes place in a pomeron-proton or proton-pomeron (single diffraction) or pomeron-pomeron (central diffraction) processes. Here, leading-order gluon-gluon fusion and quark-antiquark anihilation partonic subprocesses are taken into consideration, which are calculated within standard collinear approximation. Both pomeron flux factors as well as parton distributions in the pomeron are taken from the H1 Collaboration analysis of diffractive structure function and diffractive dijets at HERA. The extra corrections from subleading reggeon exchanges are explicitly calculated and are also taken into consideration. Several quark-level differential distributions are shown. The hadronization of charm and bottom quarks is taken into account by means of fragmentation function technique. Predictions for single- and central-diffractive production in the case of inclusive $D$ and $B$ mesons, as well as $D\bar D$ pairs are presented, including detector acceptance of the ATLAS, CMS and LHCb Collaborations. The experimental aspects of possible standard and dedicated measurements are carefully discussed.