Aspects of heavy quark production in polarized proton proton collisions

We examine the spin-dependence of b-quark production at large transverse momentum in polarized proton-proton collisions. The leading-order (LO) 2 -> 2 subprocesses, g + g -> Q + Q-bar and q+ q-bar -> Q + Q-bar have a large `analyzing power', as measured by the average spin-spin asymmetry , at large p_T, approaching -100%. The contributions from next-to-leading order (NLO) 2 -> 3 processes are also discussed and found to be dominated at large transverse momentum by subprocesses with a large and positive partonic level spin asymmetry leading to strong cancellations with the LO predictions. The results suggest that b-quark production might constitute an interesting test of the spin-dependence of NLO QCD but they also point up the importance of a full calculation of the complete O(\alpha_S~3) spin-dependent corrections for a successful extraction of the polarized gluon distribution. Similarities to gluino pair production are also briefly discussed.

p p: interaction
interaction: p p
p: polarization
polarization: p
bottom: hadroproduction
hadroproduction: bottom
gluon: polarization
polarization: gluon
quantum chromodynamics
perturbation theory: higher-order

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