Strange–beauty Meson Production by Fragmentation in Proton–antiproton Collisions *

The cross sections for the production of Bs and B ∗ s mesons through the fragmentation process in p̄p collisions were calculated. The input parameters were determined from the measured Bs and B ∗ s production rates in e e annihilation. The transverse momentum distributions dσ/dpT are given for √ s = 1.8 TeV, the Fermilab Tevatron energy. At LEP the DELPHI Collaboration has measured the probability for a b̄ antiquark to hadronize into a weakly decaying strange B meson. Assuming the hadronization is dominated by the fragmentation of the heavy b̄ antiquark, we determined the fragmentation functions Db̄→Bs(z, μ) and Db̄→B∗ s (z, μ) from the measured total probability for a b̄ antiquark to hadronize into the lowest strange-beauty states Bs( S0) and B ∗ s( S1). 2 Here z is the fraction of the b̄ antiquark momentum carried by the Bs or B ∗ s at the scale μ. The momentum distributions of the Bs and B ∗ s mesons produced in e e annihilation at the energy of the Z mass were then predicted. We then extended our calculations to the production of the Bs and B ∗ s states in pp̄ annihilation at the Tevatron, using the fragmentation functions previously determined. In the parton model the cross section for the production by fragmentation of strange B mesons in proton-antiproton annihilation involves three main factors: the structure functions of the initial partons in the proton and antiproton, the subprocess in which the initial partons produce a particular parton in the final state, and the fragmentation of this final parton into the strange B meson. The transverse momentum distribution of the Bs meson is then of the form