Measurement of beauty production with μμ correlations Available to Purchase

Beauty production with events in which two muons are observed in the final state has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 121 pb⁻¹. A low p_T threshold for muon identification, in combination with the large rapidity coverage of the ZEUS muon system, gives access to essentially the full phase space for beauty production. The dimuon selection suppresses backgrounds from charm and light flavor production. Separation of the sample into high and low‐mass, isolated and non‐isolated, like and unlike‐sign muon pairs offers redundancy which is used to further constrain the backgrounds. A total cross section for beauty production at HERA is obtained and compared to QCD predictions.