The role of heavy quarks in light hadron fragmentation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mass-dependent scheme for understanding how heavy quarks influence the formation of light hadrons, improving data description accuracy through a global QCD analysis.

Contribution

It develops a novel mass variable flavor number scheme for fragmentation functions that incorporates heavy quark mass effects, enhancing theoretical modeling.

Findings

Mass-dependent scheme improves data fit accuracy.

Global analysis confirms the importance of heavy quark effects.

Enhanced consistency in describing light hadron production.

Abstract

We investigate the role of heavy quarks in the production of light flavored hadrons and in the determination of the corresponding non perturbative hadronization probabilities. We define a general mass variable flavor number scheme for fragmentation functions that accounts for heavy quark mass effects, and perform a global QCD analysis to an up-to-date data set including very precise Belle and BaBar results. We show that the mass dependent picture provides a much more accurate and consistent description of data.