Production of b b ¯ at forward rapidity in p + p collisions at s = 510 GeV
The cross section of bottom quark-antiquark ( b b ¯ ) production in p + p collisions at s = 510 GeV is measured with the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The results are based on the yield of high mass, like-sign muon pairs measured within the PHENIX muon arm acceptance ( 1.2 < | y | < 2.2 ). The b b ¯ signal is extracted from like-sign dimuons by utilizing the unique properties of neutral B meson oscillation. We report a differential cross section of d σ b b ¯ → μ ± μ ± / d y = 0.16 ± 0.01 ( stat ) ± 0.02 ( syst ) ± 0.02 ( global ) nb for like-sign muons in the rapidity and p T ranges 1.2 < | y | < 2.2 and p T > 1 GeV / c , and dimuon mass of 5 – 10 GeV / c 2 . The extrapolated total cross section at this energy for b b ¯ production is 13.1 ± 0.6 ( stat ) ± 1.5 ( syst ) ± 2.7 ( global ) μ b . The total cross section is compared to a perturbative quantum chromodynamics calculation and is consistent within uncertainties. The azimuthal opening angle between muon pairs from b b ¯ decays and their p T distributions are compared to distributions generated using ps pythia 6, which includes next-to-leading order processes. The azimuthal correlations and pair p T distribution are not very well described by pythia calculations, but are still consistent within uncertainties. Flavor creation and flavor excitation subprocesses are favored over gluon splitting.