arXiv · hep-ph/9310346
Aspects of Heavy Quark Production in Polarized Proton-Proton Collisions
Abstract
We examine the spin-dependence of b-quark production at large transverse momentum in polarized proton-proton collisions. The leading-order (LO) 2 -> 2 subprocesses, g + g -> Q + Q-bar and q+ q-bar -> Q + Q-bar have a large `analyzing power', as measured by the average spin-spin asymmetry , at large p_T, approaching -100%. The contributions from next-to-leading order (NLO) 2 -> 3 processes are also discussed and found to be dominated at large transverse momentum by subprocesses with a large and positive partonic level spin asymmetry leading to strong cancellations with the LO predictions. The results suggest that b-quark production might constitute an interesting test of the spin-dependence of NLO QCD but they also point up the importance of a full calculation of the complete O(α_S^3) spin-dependent corrections for a successful extraction of the polarized gluon distribution. Similarities to gluino pair production are also briefly discussed.
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M. Karliner, R. W. Robinett. 1993-10-25. Aspects of Heavy Quark Production in Polarized Proton-Proton Collisions. https://doi.org/10.1016/0370-2693(94)90409-x
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