Heavy Quark Production : Theory Vs . Experiment ♣

Heavy quark production has been for years a closely scrutinized process, as it has represented one of the very few instances in which experimental measurements and next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD predictions seemed to be at variance. Such a disagreement appeared surprising, as one expects perturbative QCD to be able to handle heavy quark predictions well, due to the (relatively) large scale set by their mass and to their small hadronization corrections. Recently, new theoretical developments and better use of higher-quality non-perturbative information have however greatly reduced the disagreement in bottom production in pp̄ collisions, to the point that it does not appear significant anymore . At the same time, comparisons for top and charm production appear successful, pointing once again to a healthy status for this sector of QCD.