Quantum-chromodynamic estimates for heavy-particle production

Abstract

The associated production of hadrons containing heavy quarks is studied in the framework of a model based on quark-gluon color gauge field theory [quantum chromodynamics (QCD)]. We assume that the dominant mechanism for the production of heavy quarks in real and virtual photon beams is $\gamma \left(Q^2\right)V\to c\overline{c}$ where $V$ denotes a vector gluon and $c$ an arbitrary heavy quark. For $\pi$, $p$, and $\overline{p}$ beams we consider the mechanisms $\mathrm{VV}\to c\overline{c}$ and $q\overline{q}\to c\overline{c}$. The cross sections for the internal subprocesses are calculated at lowest order in the perturbation expansion for QCD. We include a brief discussion of higher-order corrections to our calculation.