Single- and central-diffractive production of open charm and bottom mesons at the LHC: theoretical predictions and experimental capabilities

摘要

We discuss diffractive production of open charm and bottom mesons at the LHC.The differential cross sections for single- and central-diffractive mechanismsfor $c\bar c$ and $b\bar b$ pair production are calculated in the framework ofthe Ingelman-Schlein model corrected for absorption effects. In this approachone assumes that the pomeron has a well defined partonic structure, and thatthe hard process takes place in a pomeron-proton or proton-pomeron (singlediffraction) or pomeron-pomeron (central diffraction) processes. Here,leading-order gluon-gluon fusion and quark-antiquark anihilation partonicsubprocesses are taken into consideration, which are calculated within standardcollinear approximation. Both pomeron flux factors as well as partondistributions in the pomeron are taken from the H1 Collaboration analysis ofdiffractive structure function and diffractive dijets at HERA. The extracorrections from subleading reggeon exchanges are explicitly calculated and arealso taken into consideration. Several quark-level differential distributionsare shown. The hadronization of charm and bottom quarks is taken into accountby means of fragmentation function technique. Predictions for single- andcentral-diffractive production in the case of inclusive $D$ and $B$ mesons, aswell as $D\bar D$ pairs are presented, including detector acceptance of theATLAS, CMS and LHCb Collaborations. The experimental aspects of possiblestandard and dedicated measurements are carefully discussed.