Associated production of electroweak bosons and heavy mesons at LHCb and prospects to observe double parton interactions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the production of electroweak bosons with heavy mesons at LHCb, highlighting the importance of double parton scattering and proposing new indicators for its observation.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of SPS and DPS mechanisms in boson-meson production, including necessary corrections to the DPS factorization formula at LHCb energies.

Findings

DPS dominates same-sign W± D± production.

Corrections to DPS formula improve agreement with data.

W− bosons with B-mesons are promising DPS indicators.

Abstract

The production of weak gauge bosons in association with heavy flavored mesons at the LHCb conditions is considered, and a detailed study of the different contributing processes is presented including single (SPS) and double (DPS) parton scattering mechanisms. We find that the usual DPS factorization formula needs to be corrected for the limited partonic phase space, and that including the relevant corrections reduces discrepancies in the associated $ZD$ production. We conclude finally that double parton scattering dominates the production of same-sign $W^\pm D^\pm$ states, as well as the production of $W^-$ bosons associated with $B$-mesons. The latter processes can thus be regarded as new useful DPS indicators.