Heavy-flavored emissions in hybrid collinear/high-energy factorization

TL;DR

This paper develops predictions for heavy-flavored emissions in high-energy collisions using a hybrid collinear/high-energy factorization approach, aiming to improve understanding of QCD dynamics and stabilize theoretical series.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid factorization method combining collinear and BFKL resummation for heavy-flavor production at high energies.

Findings

Provides a framework for stable BFKL series in heavy-flavor processes

Proposes observables sensitive to high-energy QCD dynamics

Enables exploration of heavy-flavor production across wider kinematic ranges

Abstract

Heavy-flavored emissions have been always considered as an excellent channel to test properties of Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at present and future colliders. Among different regimes, in which heavy-flavor production can be investigated, we focus our attention on the semi-hard one, where $s \gg \{ Q^2 \} \gg \Lambda_{QCD}$ ($s$ is the squared center-of-mass energy, $\{ Q^2 \}$ a (set of) hard scale(s) characteristic of the process and $\Lambda_{QCD}$ the QCD mass scale). Here, we build predictions in a hybrid collinear/high-energy factorization, in which the standard collinear description is supplemented by the Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov resummation of large energy logarithms. The definition and the study of observables sensitive to high-energy dynamics in the context of heavy-flavor physics has the double advantage of (i) allowing to get a stabilization of the BFKL series under higher-order corrections and (ii) providing us with an auxiliary tool to investigate heavy-flavor production in wider kinematical ranges. Hence, we propose a scientific program on heavy-flavor physics at high-energy with the goal of considering both open (heavy-jet) and bound states ($\Lambda$ baryons, heavy-light mesons and quarkonia).