Quantum-chromodynamic estimates for heavy-particle production

The associated production of hadrons containing heavy quarks is studied in the framework of a model based on quark-gluon color gauge field theory [quantum chromodynamics (QCD)]. We assume that the dominant mechanism for the production of heavy quarks in real and virtual photon beams is γ(Q²)V→cc̄ where V denotes a vector gluon and c an arbitrary heavy quark. For π, p, and p̄ beams we consider the mechanisms VV→cc̄ and qq̄→cc̄. The cross sections for the internal subprocesses are calculated at lowest order in the perturbation expansion for QCD. We include a brief discussion of higher-order corrections to our calculation.