Single- and central-diffractive production of open charm and bottom mesons at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper models the production of open charm and bottom mesons via diffractive mechanisms at the LHC, providing detailed cross section predictions considering various subprocesses and detector acceptances.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive calculation of diffractive meson production at the LHC, incorporating absorption effects, reggeon exchanges, and fragmentation functions, which advances previous models.

Findings

Predicted differential cross sections for D and B mesons.

Quantified detector acceptance effects for ATLAS, CMS, LHCb.

Included corrections from reggeon exchanges.

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. The LO gluon-gluon fusion and quark-antiquark anihilation partonic subprocesses are taken into consideration, which are calculated within standard collinear approximation. The extra corrections from reggeon exchanges are taken into account. The hadronization of charm and bottom quarks is taken into account by means of fragmentation functions. Predictions for single- and central-diffractive production in the case of $D$ and $B$ mesons, as well as $D\bar D$ pairs are presented, including detector acceptance of the ATLAS, CMS and LHCb Collaborations.