Heavy quark photoproduction in proton-proton collisions

Abstract

We calculate the photoproduction of heavy quarks in proton-proton collisions at RHIC, Tevatron, and CERN LHC energies, where the photon reaches energies larger than those accessible at DESY-HERA. The integrated cross section and the rapidity distributions for open charm and bottom production are computed employing sound high energy QCD formalisms. For the linear perturbative QCD approaches we consider both the usual collinear factorization and the k -factorization formalisms, whereas for the nonlinear QCD (saturation) calculations one considers the Golec-Biernat-Wu¨sthoff and the Iancu-Itakura- Munier parametrizations for the dipole cross section within the color dipole picture.