Small Angle Muon and Bottom Quark Production in pbarp Collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports a measurement of muon production from bottom quark decay in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.8 TeV, revealing that next-to-leading order QCD calculations significantly underestimate the observed cross section in the forward rapidity region.

Contribution

It provides the first measurement of b quark production in the forward rapidity range at Tevatron energies, highlighting discrepancies with theoretical predictions.

Findings

NLO QCD underestimates b quark production by a factor of four

First measurement of muon from b decay in forward rapidity at Tevatron

Includes a new cross section measurement using muon+jet data

Abstract

This Letter describes a measurement of the muon cross section originating from b quark decay in the forward rapidity range 2.4 < y(mu) < 3.2 in pbarp collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV. The data used in this analysis were collected by the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron. We find that NLO QCD calculations underestimate b quark production by a factor of four in the forward rapidity region. A cross section measurement using muon+jet data has been included in this version of the paper.