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Open B-Hadron Production at Hadron Colliders in QCD at Next-to-Next-to-Leading-Order and Next-to-Next-to-Leading-Logarithmic Accuracy

Michał Czakon

Terry Generet and Alexander Mitov

Rene Poncelet

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 161903 – Published 15 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/b6pf-rj4h

Abstract

We report on a calculation of open heavy-flavor production at hadron colliders which extends to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) accuracy the classic NLO-accurate formalism developed almost 30 years ago under the acronym FONLL. The approach retains the exact heavy-flavor mass dependence at low transverse momentum, pT, and resums collinear logarithms through next-to-next-to-leading log (NNLL) at high pT. Provided are predictions for B hadrons as well as B-decay products like J/Ψ and muons. The main features of the NNLO+NNLL results are reduced scale dependence and moderate NNLO correction, consistent with perturbative convergence in a wide range of kinematic scales from few GeV up to asymptotically large values of pT. The new calculation significantly improves the agreement with data for B hadrons and muons. We uncover an intriguing discrepancy in J/Ψ final states which may point to a lower value of the B→J/Ψ decay rate.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 161903– Published 15 October, 2025
  • Received 10 December 2024
  • Revised 21 September 2025
  • Accepted 1 October 2025
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