We discuss the possibility of extracting |V cb | from the future measurement at LHC of the B c → J/ψ µ + ν decay rate followed by the leptonic decay J/ψ → µ + µ − . We examine in detail the influence of the measurement of the muons' momenta and vertex reconstruction in the final uncertainty of |V cb |, as well as the required theoretical inputs at both the production and weak decay level, and their reliability in this regard. We stress the relevance of a rigorous description of the fragmentation contributions to inclusive production at large transverse momentum of heavy quarkonia in pp collisions.IFIC/95-31 FTUV/95-29 April 3, 2018
IntroductionThe interplay between theory and experiment, inherent to all branches of science, becomes crucial in high-energy physics at present. Indeed, despite any (always welcome) unexpected discovery, the required investment of money and time demands well-defined aims and physical objectives from the theoretical side long time before the start of real data-taking. This is particularly apparent at LHC experiments, in one of which (ATLAS) one of us (M.A.S.L.) is currently involved. On the other hand, it is a task of theorists to survey all those theoretical topics compatible with the ultimate goals of an experiment, keeping connection with a "realistic" experimental point of view. This is, in fact, one of the underlying motivations of the present work.In particular, it has been recently pointed out the feasibility of the observation of B c mesons in the ATLAS experiment [1]. With respect to their production rate, setting the bb cross section equal to 500 µb and assuming the fragmentation probability of a b quark into a B c meson of the order of 10 −3 [2], the expected number of B c mesons at "low" luminosity 1 is about 10 10 per year (10 7 s) corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10 fb −1 . * Research partially supported by CICYT under grant AEN 93-0234 † galdon@evalvx.ific.uv.es ‡ mas@evalvx.ific.uv.es 1 It is foreseen that during the first years, LHC will run at L ≈ 1×10 33 cm −2 s −1 . Later on, the luminosity will increase