The production cross sections of D0 and Λ+c hadrons originating from beauty-hadron decays (i.e., nonprompt) were measured for the first time at midrapidity (|y|<0.5) by the ALICE Collaboration in ...proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy √s=13 TeV. They are described within uncertainties by perturbative QCD calculations employing the fragmentation fractions of beauty quarks to baryons measured at forward rapidity by the LHCb Collaboration. The b¯b production cross section per unit of rapidity at midrapidity, estimated from these measurements, is dσb¯b/dy||y|<0.5=83.1±3.5(stat)±5.4(syst)+12.3−3.2(extrap) μb. The baryon-to-meson ratios are computed to investigate the hadronization mechanism of beauty quarks. The nonprompt Λ+c/D0 production ratio has a similar trend to the one measured for the promptly produced charmed particles and to the p/π+ and Λ/K0S ratios, suggesting a similar baryon-formation mechanism among light, strange, charm, and beauty hadrons. The pT -integrated nonprompt Λ+c/D0 ratio is found to be significantly higher than the one measured in e+e− collisions.
A measurement of dielectron production in proton-proton (pp) collisions at √s = 13 TeV recorded with the ALICE detector at the CERN LHC, is presented in this Letter. The data set was recorded with a ...reduced magnetic solenoid field. This enables the investigation of a kinematic domain at low dielectron (ee) invariant mass mee and pair transverse momentum pT,ee that was previously inaccessible at the LHC. The cross section for dielectron production is studied as a function of mee, pT,ee, and event multiplicity dNch/dη. The expected dielectron rate from hadron decays, called hadronic cocktail, utilizes a parametrization of the measured η/π0 ratio in pp and proton-nucleus collisions, assuming that this ratio shows no strong dependence on collision energy at low transverse momentum. Comparison of the measured dielectron yield to the hadronic cocktail at 0.15 < mee < 0.6 GeV / c2 and for pT,ee < 0.4 GeV/c indicates an enhancement of soft dielectrons, reminiscent of the "anomalous" soft-photon and soft-dilepton excess in hadron-hadron collisions reported by several experiments under different experimental conditions. The enhancement factor over the hadronic cocktail amounts to 1.61 ± 0.13 ( stat ) ± 0.17 (syst, data) ± 0.34 (syst, cocktail) in the ALICE acceptance. Acceptance-corrected excess spectra in m ee and pT,ee are extracted and compared with calculations of dielectron production from hadronic bremsstrahlung and thermal radiation within a hadronic many-body approach.
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