Bottom-flavored inclusive emissions in the variable-flavor number scheme: A high-energy analysis

TL;DR

This paper investigates bottom-flavored hadron production in high-energy proton-proton collisions using a hybrid BFKL and collinear factorization approach, aiming to identify signals of high-energy resummation effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel formalism combining BFKL resummation with collinear factorization for bottom-flavored hadron production and proposes new observables for detecting high-energy QCD dynamics.

Findings

Cross section predictions for bottom-flavored hadron production.

Azimuthal correlation patterns sensitive to BFKL effects.

Potential for double differential distributions to reveal resummation interplay.

Abstract

We propose the inclusive semi-hard production, in proton-proton collisions, of two bottom-flavored hadrons, as well as of a single bottom-flavored hadron accompanied by a light jet, as novel channels for the manifestation of stabilization effects of the high-energy resummation under next-to-leading-order corrections. Our formalism relies on a hybrid high-energy and collinear factorization, where the BFKL resummation of leading and next-to-leading energy logarithms is used together with collinear factorization. We present results for cross sections and azimuthal correlations differential in rapidity, which are widely recognized as standard observables where to hunt for distinctive signals of the BFKL dynamics. We propose the study of double differential distributions in the transverse momenta of final-state particles as a common basis to investigate the interplay of different kinds of resummation mechanisms.