Heavy-flavor hadron decays producing muon cross sections in pp collisions at high transverse momentum

Abstract

The focus of this work was on investigating and comparing two methods for calculating the cross sections of muons produced by the decay of heavy-flavor hadrons in pp collisions, which cover the interval 2<pT< 20 GeV/c at a center-of-mass energy of s = 7 TeV. One method involves using the fixed-order plus next-to-leading logarithms (FONLL) approach to scale the measured pT-differential cross section of muons from heavy-flavor hadron decay in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of s = 5.02 TeV. The other method involves using FONLL calculations to extrapolate the published measured pT-differential cross section at s = 7 TeV to higher pT. In these two methods, we can use the published measured pT-differential cross section at s = 5.02 TeV and s = 7 TeV, which cover the interval 2<pT< 20 GeV/c and 2<pT< 12 GeV/c, respectively. In terms of consistency within uncertainties, the results from both methods were compared not only to pQCD-based FONLL calculations but also to each other. Because they provide the necessary pp reference, these calculations are critical for determining the nuclear modification factor of muons from heavy flavor decays in heavy-ion collisions.