Associated production of prompt photons and heavy quarks in off-shell gluon-gluon fusion

Abstract

In the framework of the kt-factorization approach, we study the production of prompt photons associated with heavy (charm and beauty) quarks in hadron-hadron collisions at high energies. Our consideration is based on the amplitude for the production of a single photon associated with a quark pair in the fusion of two off-shell gluons. The total and differential cross sections are presented and the conservative error analysis is performed. Two sets of unintegrated gluon distributions in the proton have been used in numerical calculation: the one obtained from Ciafaloni-Catani-Fiorani-Marchesini evolution equation and the other from Kimber-Martin-Ryskin prescription. The theoretical results are compared with recent experimental data taken by the CDF collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron. Our analysis extends to specific angular correlations between the produced prompt photons and muons originating from semileptonic decays of the final charmed or beauty quarks. We point out the importance of such observables, which can serve as a crucial test for the unintegrated gluon densities in a proton. Finally, we extrapolate the theoretical predictions to the CERN LHC energies. This paper is dedicated to the memory of P.F. Ermolov, who died on May 14, 2008.

21 pages, 9 figures

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• Prompt photon hadroproduction at high energies in off-shell gluon-gluon fusion
• Perturbative exponential expansion and matter neutrino oscillations
• Parton transverse momenta and direct photon production in hadronic collisions at high energies
• Reggeized quark -- Reggeized quark -- gluon effective vertex

Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Deep inelastic prompt photon production at HERA in the kt-factorization approach
• Prompt photon and associated heavy quark production at hadron colliders with kt-factorization
• Measurement of the differential $\gamma +2b$-jet cross section and the ratio $\sigma$($\gamma +2b$-jets)/$\sigma$($\gamma +b$-jet) in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$=1.96 TeV
• The P-P(P) cross-section of isolated single-photon production in the $k_t$-factorization and different angular ordering unintegrated parton distributions frameworks