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Production cross sections of charm-beauty mesons in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC

Madeeha Nazish* and Faisal Akram†

  • *Contact author: diha.lifeline@gmail.com
  • †Contact author: faisal.chep@pu.edu.pk
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Phys. Rev. D 112, 094038 – Published 19 November, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/q19d-b3qc

Abstract

In this work, we calculate the production cross sections of the 1S and 1P states of the Bc meson for proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus colliding beam experiments at LHC and RHIC. We provide estimates for the Au nucleus at RHIC energies and for the Pb and Xe nuclei at LHC energies. Previous estimates of these cross sections have ignored quark antiquark annihilation diagrams and are confined to S states for Pb and Au nuclei. The cross sections of the P states are also equally important as these states lie below the BD threshold and cascade into Bc ground states with 100% probability. In addition to calculating the pT, rapidity, and pseudorapidity distributions of the cross sections, we also determine the nuclear modification factors RpA and RAA for A=Pb, Xe, and Au. The results provide a baseline for the upcoming experimental studies of Bc mesons in pp, pA, and AA collisions in RUN III of LHC and could help develop experimental strategies for identification of hitherto undiscovered states of the Bc meson.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 094038– Published 19 November, 2025
  • Received 22 December 2024
  • Accepted 2 November 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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