Analytic Calculation of Prompt Photon plus Associated Heavy Flavor at Next-to-Leading Order in QCD
Abstract
Contributions through second order,
O(
α
2
s
)
, in perturbative quantum chromodynamics are calculated analytically for inclusive associated production of a prompt photon and a charm quark at large values of transverse momentum in high energy hadron-hadron collisions. Seven partonic subprocesses contribute at order
α
2
s
. We find important corrections to the lowest order,
O(
α
s
)
, subprocess
cg→γc
. We demonstrate to what extent data from
p+
p
¯
→γ+c+X
may serve to measure the charm quark density in the nucleon.