Heavy quark production at HERA and its relevance for the LHC

Abstract

The import of HERA data on heavy quark production for LHC experiments is discussed. Knowlegde of all aspects of the beauty and charm production process, viz. the parton density functions of colliding hadrons, the hard scatter, and the fragmentation of the quarks into hadrons, can aid LHC experimentation. This short write-up concentrates on possible influences HERA data can have and on the current status (and history) of beauty production from both HERA and Tevatron experiments. In general, next-to-leading order QCD gives a reasonable description of beauty production although some regions of phase space such as low p_T show indications of differences.

4 pages, to appear in DIS2006 conference proceedings