Measurement of the $B_c^{\pm}$ production cross section in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a precise measurement of the production cross section ratio of the $B_c^+$ meson to the $B^+$ meson in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV, using the complete CDF Run II dataset.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive measurement of the $B_c^+$ production cross section ratio at Tevatron energies with detailed systematic analysis.

Findings

Measured the ratio of $B_c^+$ to $B^+$ production cross sections times branching fractions as 0.211 ± 0.012 (stat) +0.021/-0.020 (syst).

Estimated the total $B_c^+$ production cross section range using known branching fractions and $B^+$ data.

Utilized the full CDF Run II dataset of 8.7 fb$^{-1}$ for the analysis.

Abstract

We describe a measurement of the ratio of the cross sections times branching fractions of the $B_c^+$ meson in the decay mode $B_c^+ \rightarrow J/\psi \mu\nu$ to the $B^+$ meson in the decay mode $B^+ \rightarrow J/\psi K^+$ in proton-antiproton collisions at center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV. The measurement is based on the complete CDF Run II data set, which comes from an integrated luminosity of $8.7\,{\rm fb}^{-1}$. The ratio of the production cross sections times branching fractions for $B_c^+$ and $B_c^+$ mesons with momentum transverse to the beam greater than $6~\textrm{GeV}/c$ and rapidity magnitude smaller than 0.6 is $0.211\pm 0.012~\mbox{(stat)}^{+0.021}_{-0.020}~\mbox{(syst)}$. Using the known $B^+ \rightarrow J/\psi K^+$ branching fraction, the known $B^+$ production cross section, and a selection of the predicted $B_c^+ \rightarrow J/\psi \mu\nu$ branching fractions, the range for the total $B_c^+$ production cross section is estimated.