General mass treatment for Z boson production in association with a heavy quark at hadron colliders

¹ Department of Physics, Kennesaw State University, 370 Paulding Avenue, Kennesaw, GA 30144, USA
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
³ Department of Physics, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275-0181, USA
⁴ Physics Department, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4350, USA
⁵ Department of Physics, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, New York 14260-1500, USA

^* e-mail: mguzzi@kennesaw.edu
^** e-mail: nadolsky@smu.edu
^*** e-mail: reina@hep.fsu.edu
^**** e-mail: dw24@buffalo.edu
^† e-mail: xiekepi1@msu.edu

Published online: 10 December 2024

Abstract

We present the application of the ACOT and S-ACOT general mass variable flavor number schemes to proton-proton collisions with particular attention to the production of final states with at least one heavy quark. Subtraction and residual heavy-quark parton distribution functions are introduced to facilitate the implementation of this scheme at higher orders in perturbative QCD. The calculation of Z-boson hadronic production with at least one b jet beyond the lowest order in QCD is considered for illustration purposes.