In the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme, the “heavy-quark mechanisms” of $B_c(B_c^{*})$ meson hadroproduction via the subprocesses $g+c\to B_c(B_c^{*})+\cdots$ and $g+\overline{b}\to B_c(B_c^{*})+\cdots$ are investigated. In the scheme, possible double counting from these mechanisms and the “light mechanisms” (the gluon-gluon fusion and quark-antiquark annihilation mechanisms) is subtracted properly. The numerical results show that the transverse-momentum, $p_t$, distribution of the produced $B_c(B_c^{*})$ from the “intrinsic heavy-quark mechanisms” (i.e. the heavy-quark mechanisms in which the double-counting components have been subtracted accordingly) declines faster with the increment of the $p_t$ than that from the light mechanisms, and only in the small $p_t$ region ($p_t\lesssim 7.0\mathrm{GeV}$) the intrinsic heavy-quark mechanisms themselves may make remarkable contributions. The combined contributions from the intrinsic heavy-quark mechanisms and the light mechanisms to the production are compared with that obtained by most of the calculations in the literature, which in some sense are within the fixed flavor number scheme at leading order, and we find that the production by virtue of the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme is more or less the same as the one in the literature, except in the small $p_t$ region.

• Received 6 September 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.114009