Heavy flavor contributions to the Drell-Yan cross section

Abstract

We investigate the effect of heavy flavor contributions to vector boson ($V$ = $\gamma$, $Z$, $W$) production which is described by the Drell-Yan mechanism. All reactions with bottom and top quarks ($Q_i$ = $b$, $t$) in the final state, like $q_1 + \bar{q}_2\rightarrow V + Q_1 + \bar{Q}_2$ and $g + g\rightarrow V + Q_1 + \bar{Q}_2$, are considered. This study also includes the virtual contributions containing heavy flavor loops which were not taken into account earlier in the literature. Our analysis reveals that the above corrections to the Drell-Yan cross section are very small. Only at energies characteristic for the LHC they are of the same order of magnitude as the order \alphastwo~QCD contributions due to light quark and gluon subprocesses calculated earlier in the literature.