Total cross sections for heavy flavour production in hadronic collisions and QCD

The total cross sections for top, bottom and charm production in hadronic collisions at energies of practical interest are studied using a recent complete calculation of the next-to-leading QCD corrections. A set of proton structure functions with QCD evolution at next-to-leading accuracy, with variable Λ and including updated experimental information, is used. A careful discussion of theoretical errors due to scale dependence and ignorance of Λ, input gluon density and so on is given. It is found that particularly reliable predictions can be given for top or b' production at Spanti pS and Tevatron energies. By comparison with the UA1 experimental bounds, we find the limits mt > 41 GeV and msub(b') > 34 GeV. The cross sections for heavy quark production at supercolliders (LHC, SSC) are estimated. Bottom and charm production in fixed target, ISR and collider experiments are considered. It is found that the corrective terms tend to improve the agreement with the data. In particular, the computed amount of b-production agrees with the measurements by UA1 in panti p collisions at √S = 0.63 TeV and by NA10 and WA78 in π-N at √S = 23-24.5 GeV. The charm production data in pN collisions at fixed target energies are in general agreement with the corrected QCD prediction with mc ≅ 1.5 GeV, i.e. without need of assuming a small effective charm mass. (orig.)