High-energy QCD dynamics from bottom flavor fragmentation at the Hi-Lumi LHC

Abstract

AbstractWe study the inclusive production of hadrons with bottom flavor at the LHC and its luminosity upgrade. We describe the collinear fragmentation of singly b-flavored hadrons, B mesons and $$\Lambda _b$$ Λ b baryons, via the determination of fragmentation functions, while for charmed B mesons, $$B_c(^1S_0)$$ B c ( 1 S 0 ) and $$B_c(^3S_1)$$ B c ( 3 S 1 ) particles, we employ the novel set, built on the basis of state-of-the-art nonrelativistic QCD inputs. We use the Jethad multimodular working environment to analyze rapidity and transverse-momentum distributions for observables sensitive to the associated emission of two hadrons or a hadron-plus-jet system. Our reference formalism is the $$\mathrm{NLL/NLO^+}$$ NLL / NLO + hybrid collinear and high-energy factorization, where the standard collinear description is improved by the inclusions of energy logarithms resummed up to the next-to-leading approximation and beyond. We provide corroborating evidence that b-flavor emissions act as fair stabilizers of the high-energy resummation, thus serving as valuable tools for precision studies of high-energy QCD. As a bonus, we highlight that the predicted production-rate hierarchy between noncharmed b-hadrons and charmed $$B_c(^1S_0)$$ B c ( 1 S 0 ) mesons is in line with recent LHCb estimates. This serves as simultaneous benchmark both for the hybrid factorization and for the single-parton fragmentation mechanism based on initial-scale inputs calculated via the nonrelativistic QCD effective theory.