Measurement of the forward-backward asymmetry in the production of b± mesons in p p ¯ collisions at s =1.96TeV

Abstract

We present a measurement of the forward-backward asymmetry in the production of B± mesons, AFB(B±), using B±→J/ψK± decays in 10.4fb-1 of pp¯ collisions at s=1.96TeV collected by the D0 experiment during Run II of the Tevatron collider. A nonzero asymmetry would indicate a preference for a particular flavor, i.e., b quark or b¯ antiquark, to be produced in the direction of the proton beam. We extract AFB(B±) from a maximum likelihood fit to the difference between the numbers of forward- and backward-produced B± mesons. We measure an asymmetry consistent with zero: AFB(B±)=[-0.24±0.41(stat)±0.19(syst)]%.