Beauty photoproduction measured using decays into muons in dijet events in ep collisions at $\sqrt{s}$=318 GeV

TL;DR

This paper measures beauty quark production in ep collisions at HERA using muon decays in dijet events, comparing results with QCD predictions and Monte Carlo models to test theoretical accuracy.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed differential cross section measurements of beauty photoproduction in ep collisions using muon decays, validating NLO QCD predictions.

Findings

NLO QCD models describe the data well.

Measured cross sections as functions of muon and jet kinematics.

Validated the use of muon decays for beauty identification.

Abstract

The photoproduction of beauty quarks in events with two jets and a muon has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 110 pb$^{- 1}$. The fraction of jets containing b quarks was extracted from the transverse momentum distribution of the muon relative to the closest jet. Differential cross sections for beauty production as a function of the transverse momentum and pseudorapidity of the muon, of the associated jet and of $x_{\gamma}^{jets}$, the fraction of the photon's momentum participating in the hard process, are compared with MC models and QCD predictions made at next-to-leading order. The latter give a good description of the data.