The high-energy spectrum of QCD from inclusive emissions of charmed B-mesons

We investigate the high-energy behavior of strong interactions through a study on the inclusive hadroproduction of charmed B-mesons (Bc or Bc* states) accompanied by non-charmed b-hadron or light-flavored jet emissions at LHC energies and kinematic configurations. By making use of the hybrid high-energy and collinear factorization, where the standard fixed-order description based on collinear parton densities and fragmentation functions is enhanced via the Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov (BFKL) resummation of energy logarithms, we perform a full next-to-leading order analysis of distributions differential in rapidities and azimuthal angles calculated by the hands of the JETHAD multi-modular working package. The large observed transverse momenta justify the use of non-relativistic QCD next-toleading order fragmentation functions to describe the heavy-flavored meson production mechanism. We come out with the conclusion that the study of this process can be included in forthcoming analyses at the (high-luminosity) LHC as a tool to access the QCD dynamics at high energies and to explore possible common ground between different resummation approaches. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP3.