Transverse momentum distributions of heavy hadrons and polarized heavy quarks

Abstract We initiate the study of transverse momentum-dependent (TMD) fragmentation functions for heavy quarks, demonstrate their factorization in terms of novel nonperturbative matrix elements in heavy-quark effective theory (HQET), and prove new TMD sum rules...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: von Kuk, Rebecca, Michel, Johannes K. L., Sun, Zhiquan
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2023
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152370
Description
Summary:Abstract We initiate the study of transverse momentum-dependent (TMD) fragmentation functions for heavy quarks, demonstrate their factorization in terms of novel nonperturbative matrix elements in heavy-quark effective theory (HQET), and prove new TMD sum rules that arise from heavy-quark spin symmetry. We discuss the phenomenology of heavy-quark TMD FFs at B factories and find that the Collins effect, in contrast to claims in the literature, is not parametrically suppressed by the heavy-quark mass. We further calculate all TMD parton distribution functions for the production of heavy quarks from polarized gluons within the nucleon and use our results to demonstrate the potential of the future EIC to resolve TMD heavy-quark fragmentation in semi-inclusive DIS, complementing the planned EIC program to use heavy quarks as probes of gluon distributions.