Heavy quark production in photon-Pomeron interactions at high energies

Abstract

The diffractive heavy quark cross sections are estimated considering photon-Pomeron interactions in hadron -hadron at RHIC, Tevatron, and CERN LHC energies. We assume the validity of the hard diffractive factorization and calculate the charm and bottom total cross sections and rapidity distributions using the diffractive parton distribution functions of the Pomeron obtained by the H1 Collaboration at DESY-HERA. Such processes are sensitive to the gluon content of the Pomeron at high energies and are a good place to constrain the behavior of this distribution. We also compare our predictions with those obtained using the dipole model, and verify that these processes are a good test of the different mechanisms for heavy quarks diffractive production at hadron colliders.