Is There a Significant Excess in Bottom Hadroproduction at the Tevatron?

Abstract

We discuss the excess in the hadroproduction of B mesons at the Tevatron. We show that an accurate use of up-to-date information on the B fragmentation function reduces the observed excess to an acceptable level. Possible implications for experimental results reporting bottom quark cross sections, also showing an excess with respect to next-to-leading order theoretical predictions, are discussed.

5 pages, Latex, 4 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett