Data-driven measurements of the beauty hadron production in p-Pb collisions at \sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.02 and 8.16 TeV

Abstract

Beauty-hadron production in proton-nucleus collisions is a particularly powerful probe of cold nuclear matter (CNM) effects: thanks to the large beauty-quark mass, the production is initiated in early hard scatterings and is calculable in perturbative QCD, while the modifications observed in nuclear collisions directly constrain the nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) in a kinematic region complementary to that accessed by charm. Precisely quantifying these effects is a prerequisite for isolating possible signatures of quark-gluon plasma formation in heavy-ion collisions. In this work, the production of open beauty hadrons in p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.02$ and $8.16$~TeV is studied via a data-driven Bayesian unfolding of ALICE and LHCb measurements of non-prompt $D^{0}$ and J/$ψ$ mesons. The unfolded $p_{T}$- and $y$-differential cross sections are mutually consistent across decay channels and compatible with directly reconstructed beauty-hadron measurements. The nuclear modification factor $R_{pPb}$ is reported as a function of transverse momentum and rapidity, providing the first unfolding-based result spanning $-4.0 < y < 4.0$ of beauty-hadron $R_{pPb}$ covering the full rapidity range, with a precision comparable to or better than that of existing data. The results are compared with calculations based on nPDFs and can provide valuable constraints for future global nPDF fits. The total inclusive B hadron production cross section in p-Pb collisions is also reported. A weaker CNM suppression is observed for beauty hadrons than for charm hadrons, consistent with the expected mass hierarchy of cold-nuclear-matter effects.