Abstract:
This paper explores a new mechanism for B production in
which a b quark combines with a light parton from the
hard-scattering process before hadronizing into the B
hadron. This recombination mechanism can be calculated
within perturbative QCD up to a few nonperturbative
constants. Though suppressed at large transverse momentum by
a factor Lambda_QCD m_b/p_t^2 relative to b quark
fragmentation production, it can be important at large
rapidities. A signature for this heavy-quark recombination
mechanism in proton-antiproton colliders is the presence of
rapidity asymmetries in B cross sections. Given reasonable
assumptions about the size of nonperturbative parameters
entering the calculation, we find that the asymmetries are
only significant for rapidities larger than those currently
probed by collider experiments.