Inclusive production of a heavy-light dijet system in hybrid high-energy and collinear factorization

Abstract

We propose the study of the inclusive hadroproduction of a heavy-flavored jet in association with a light jet, as a probe channel of strong interactions at high energies. We build up a hybrid factorization that encodes genuine high-energy effects, provided by a partial next-to-leading BFKL resummation, inside the standard collinear structure of the cross section. We present a detailed analysis of different distributions, shaped on kinematic ranges typical of experimental analyses at the Large Hadron Collider, and differential in rapidity, azimuthal angle and transverse momentum. The fair stability that these distributions exhibit under higher-order corrections motivates our interest toward future studies. Here, the hybrid factorization could help to deepen our understanding of heavy-flavor physics in wider kinematic ranges, like the ones accessible at the Electron-Ion Collider.