Influence of final-state radiation on heavy-flavour observables in pp collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how final-state radiation affects heavy-flavour observables in proton-proton collisions, highlighting the sensitivity of transverse momentum correlations of D mesons to FSR effects using different models.

Contribution

It introduces the transverse momentum correlation of D and Dbar mesons as a new observable sensitive to FSR in pp collisions, comparing results from EPOS3+HQ and Pythia 6 models.

Findings

Initial pT correlation remains partially intact after FSR.

Significant differences in correlation shapes between models.

Correlations can probe energy loss mechanisms in heavy-ion collisions.

Abstract

The influence of final-state radiation (FSR) of heavy quarks on observables in high-energy proton-proton collisions is studied. The transverse momentum correlation of D and Dbar mesons, which have been emitted with an azimuthal difference angle close to 180 degrees, is identified as an observable which is sensitive to the FSR process. We demonstrate this by performing calculations with the EPOS3+HQ model and with the event generator Pythia 6. The initial symmetric pT = pT' correlation for back-to-back pairs does not completely vanish in EPOS3+HQ, neither for the final DDbar pairs nor for the ccbar pairs before hadronisation. Also a significant difference in the shape of the correlation distribution for EPOS3+HQ and Pythia 6 is observed. Therefore, particle correlations in pp data offer the possibility to study several aspects of energy loss in heavy-ion collisions.