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Probing the Color-Octet Mechanism via Dihadron Fragmentation in χ_{b} Decays
Zhi-Guo He1, Guanghui Li2,3, Yu-Jie Tian2,3
1Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Department of Physics and Electronics, School of Mathematics and Physics, Beijing 100029, China.
Abstract:
The color-octet (CO) mechanism is a cornerstone of nonrelativistic QCD, yet knowledge of its long-distance matrix elements remains limited, preventing stringent tests of the theory. We demonstrate that the Artru-Collins asymmetry in hadronic decays of the P-wave bottomonium state χ_{b2} provides a direct probe of CO dynamics. At leading order, the asymmetry arises exclusively from the CO decay channel, whereas the color-singlet (CS) contribution affects only the unpolarized rate, so that a nonzero signal constitutes unambiguous evidence of the CO mechanism. This observable provides a novel way to extract the ratio ρ_{8} between CO and CS matrix elements. Focusing on e^{+}e^{-}→ϒ(2S)→γχ_{b2} at Belle, we show that the asymmetric beam configuration preserves the asymmetry in the laboratory frame and avoids the strong suppression present in the center-of-mass frame. With the Belle II dataset, ρ_{8} could be determined with sufficient precision to address the long-standing discrepancy between the lattice calculations and phenomenological determinations.
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