Analytic Calculation of Prompt Photon plus Associated Heavy Flavor at Next-to-Leading Order in QCD

Abstract

Contributions through second order, $O({\alpha }_s^2)$, 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 ${\alpha }_s^2$. We find important corrections to the lowest order, $O({\alpha }_s)$, subprocess $cg\to \gamma c$. We demonstrate to what extent data from $p+\bar{p}\to \gamma +c+X$ may serve to measure the charm quark density in the nucleon.

Comments: 34 pages RevTex plus 9 figures submitted as uuencoded ps files; figures replaced and text revised to include one additional reference