# Hadroproduction of open heavy flavour for PDF analyses

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new theoretical scheme, SACOT-mT, for calculating open heavy-flavour hadroproduction cross sections, improving the reliability of perturbative QCD predictions across all kinematic ranges in high-energy collisions.

## Contribution

The paper presents SACOT-mT, a novel scheme within the general-mass variable-flavour-number formalism, enhancing the accuracy of heavy-flavour production calculations in QCD.

## Key findings

- Improved description of heavy-flavour cross sections across all pT ranges.
- Enhanced robustness of LHC heavy-flavour measurements for PDF analyses.
- Introduction of a scheme analogous to SACOT-χ for deep-inelastic scattering.

## Abstract

Due to the large masses of the charm and bottom quarks, their production cross sections are calculable within the perturbative QCD. This makes the heavy-quark mesons important observables in high-energy collisions of protons and nuclei. However, the available calculations for heavy-flavored-meson hadroproduction have been somewhat problematic in reliably describing the cross sections across the full kinematic range from zero to very high $p_{\rm T}$. This has put some question marks on the robustness of LHC heavy-flavored-meson measurements in studying the partonic structure of the colliding hadrons and nuclei. Here, we introduce SACOT-$m_{\rm T}$ - a novel scheme for open heavy-flavour hadroproduction within the general-mass variable-flavour-number formalism that solves this problem. The introduced scheme is an analogue of the SACOT-$\chi$ scheme often used for deeply-inelastic scattering in global analyses of PDFs.