Hadroproduction of D and B mesons in a massive VFNS

Abstract

We present a calculation of the next-to-leading order cross section for the inclusive hadroproduction of D and B mesons as a function of the transverse momentum and the rapidity in a massive variable flavor number scheme. We compare our numerical results with recent data from the CDF Collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron for the production of D^0, D^{*+}, D^+, and D_s^+ mesons at center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{S} = 1.96$ TeV and find reasonably good agreement with the measured cross sections.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: QCD predictions for one-particle inclusive production of charmed mesons, $X_c = D^0, D^{\star +}, D^+, D_s^+$, at the Tevatron Run II. In each case, the results are shown for the average of the observed meson with its antiparticle $(X_c + \overline{X}_c)/2$. The solid lines have been obtained with $\mu_{\rm R}=\mu_{\rm F}=\mu_{\rm F}^\prime = m_T$. The upper and lower dashed curves represent the maximum and minimum cross sections found by varying $\mu_{\rm R}$, $\mu_{\rm F}$, and $\mu_{\rm F}^\prime$ independently within a factor of 2 up and down relative to the central values while keeping their ratios $0.5 \le \mu_{\rm F}/\mu_{\rm R}, \mu_{\rm F}^\prime/\mu_{\rm R}, \mu_{\rm F}/\mu_{\rm F}^\prime \le 2$. CDF data Acosta:2003ax are shown for comparison.
• Figure 2: Ratios of experimental results and our central theoretical predictions (solid lines in Fig. \ref{['fig:fig1']}). In addition, the theoretical uncertainty bands are shown, obtained as the ratio of the upper (lower) QCD prediction and the central curve.