Probing heavy-flavor parton distribution functions at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper discusses how measurements of heavy-flavor hadron production at the LHC can be used to probe and improve the understanding of heavy-flavor parton distribution functions in the proton, using advanced QCD theoretical frameworks.

Contribution

It demonstrates the sensitivity of LHCb 13 TeV data to the bottom-quark PDF using the S-ACOT-MPS scheme and highlights the potential for extending this approach to other processes.

Findings

Inclusive $B^$ meson production is sensitive to bottom-quark PDFs.

The S-ACOT-MPS scheme effectively models heavy-flavor production.

Inclusion of such measurements can reduce uncertainties in heavy-flavor PDFs.

Abstract

Precision measurements of heavy-flavor hadroproduction at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have the ability to probe heavy-flavor parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the proton. Sensitivity of inclusive $B^\pm$ meson production cross section measurements at LHCb 13 TeV to the bottom-quark PDF is illustrated by using theory predictions obtained with a the S-ACOT-MPS general mass variable flavor number (GMVFN) scheme within the QCD factorization formula. This approach can easily be extended to other heavy-flavor production processes, such as $Z$ boson production in association with a bottom- or a charm-jet. The inclusion of such measurements will represent an important improvement for future global QCD analyses that aim at reducing uncertainties of heavy-flavor PDFs, provided that a consistent general mass treatment in $pp$ collisions is used. This work is related to the activities of the Snowmass topic groups EF03, and EF06.