Abstract
PHENIX reports differential cross sections of pairs from semileptonic heavy-flavor decays and the Drell-Yan production mechanism measured in collisions at at forward and backward rapidity (). The pairs from , , and Drell-Yan are separated using a template fit to unlike- and like-sign muon pair spectra in mass and . The azimuthal opening angle correlation between the muons from and decays and the pair- distributions are compared to distributions generated using pythia and powheg models, which both include next-to-leading order processes. The measured distributions for pairs from are consistent with pythia calculations. The data present narrower azimuthal correlations and softer distributions compared to distributions generated from powheg. The data are well described by both models. The extrapolated total cross section for bottom production is , which is consistent with previous measurements at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in the same system at the same collision energy and is approximately a factor of 2 higher than the central value calculated with theoretical models. The measured Drell-Yan cross section is in good agreement with next-to-leading-order quantum-chromodynamics calculations.
29 More- Received 9 May 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.072003
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society