Production of doubly heavy baryon at the Muon-Ion Collider

This study forecasts the production of doubly heavy baryons, Ξcc, Ξbc, and Ξbb, within the nonrelativistic QCD framework at the Muon-Ion Collider (MuIC). It examines two production mechanisms: photon-gluon fusion (γ + g → (QQ')[n] +Q̄ +Q'̄) and extrinsic heavy quark channels (γ + Q → (QQ')[n] + Q'̄), where Q and $Q'$ denote heavy quarks (c or b) and $(QQ')[n]$ represents a diquark in specific spin-color configurations. The diquark fragments into ΞQQ' baryons with high probability. For Ξcc and Ξbb, the relevant configurations are [¹S₀]₆ (spin-singlet and color-sextuplet) and [³S₁]3̄ (spin-triplet and color-antitriplet). For Ξbc, the configurations are [¹S₀]3̄, [¹S₀]₆, [³S₁]3̄, and [³S₁]₆. The study compares total and differential cross-sections for these channels, highlighting their uncertainties. The results indicate that the extrinsic heavy quark channel, particularly the [³S₁]3̄ configuration, dominates ΞQQ' production, though other diquark states also contribute significantly. Using quark masses mc = 1.80 ± 0.10 GeV and mb = 5.1 ± 0.20 GeV, the study estimates annual event yields at MuIC (√s = 1 TeV, luminosity L 40 fb⁻¹) of (3.67+1.29-0.91) × 10⁹ for Ξcc, (2.24+0.28-0.20) × 10⁸ for Ξbc, and (3.00+0.64-0.56) × 10⁶ for Ξbb. These findings suggest that MuIC will significantly enhance our understanding of doubly heavy baryons.