The high-energy spectrum of QCD from inclusive emissions of charmed $B$-mesons

TL;DR

This paper explores the high-energy behavior of QCD through the inclusive production of charmed B-mesons at the LHC, employing advanced factorization and resummation techniques to analyze distributions and test QCD dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a full NLO analysis of charmed B-meson production using hybrid high-energy and collinear factorization with BFKL resummation, enhancing understanding of QCD at high energies.

Findings

Validates the use of NLO fragmentation functions for heavy-flavored mesons.

Demonstrates the potential of this process to probe QCD dynamics at the LHC.

Provides a framework for future high-luminosity LHC analyses.

Abstract

We investigate the high-energy behavior of strong interactions through a study on the inclusive hadroproduction of charmed $B$-mesons ($B_c$ or $B_c^*$ states) accompanied by non-charmed $b$-hadron or light-flavored jet emissions at LHC energies and kinematic configurations. By making use of the hybrid high-energy and collinear factorization, where the standard fixed-order description based on collinear parton densities and fragmentation functions is enhanced via the Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov (BFKL) resummation of energy logarithms, we perform a full next-to-leading order analysis of distributions differential in rapidities and azimuthal angles calculated by the hands of the JETHAD multi-modular working package. The large observed transverse momenta justify the use of non-relativistic QCD next-to-leading order fragmentation functions to describe the heavy-flavored meson production mechanism. We come out with the conclusion that the study of this process can be included in forthcoming analyses at the (high-luminosity) LHC as a tool to access the QCD dynamics at high energies and to explore possible common ground between different resummation approaches.