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

Abstract

In this work, we calculate the production cross sections of the 1S and 1P states of the $B_{c}$ 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 anti-quark 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 $B_{c}$ ground states with 100\% probability. In addition to calculating the $p_{T}$, rapidity, and pseudo-rapidity distributions of the cross sections, we also determine the nuclear modification factors $R_{pA}$ and $R_{AA}$ for $A=\textrm{Pb}$, $\textrm{Xe}$, and $\textrm{Au}$. The results provide a baseline for the upcoming experimental studies of $B_{c}$ 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 $B_{c}$ meson.