Measurement of the cross section and angular correlations for associated production of a Z boson with b hadrons in pp collisions at root s=7 TeV
Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research ; Austrian Science Fund ; Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique ; Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek ; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) ; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) ; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) ; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) ; Bulgarian Ministry of Education, Youth and Science ; CERN ; Chinese Academy of Sciences ; Ministry of Science and Technology ; National Natural Science Foundation of China ; Colombian Funding Agency (COLCIENCIAS) ; Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport ; Research Promotion Foundation, Cyprus ; Ministry of Education and Research ; European Regional Development Fund, Estonia ; Academy of Finland ; Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture ; Helsinki Institute of Physics ; Institut National de Physique Nucleaire et de Physique des Particules / CNRS ; Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives / CEA, France ; Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung ; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren, Germany ; General Secretariat for Research and Technology, Greece ; National Scientific Research Foundation ; National Office for Research and Technology, Hungary ; Department of Atomic Energy ; Department of Science and Technology, India ; Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Iran ; Science Foundation, Ireland ; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy ; Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology ; World Class University program of NRF, Republic of Korea ; Lithuanian Academy of Sciences ; CINVESTAV ; CONACYT ; SEP ; UASLP-FAI ; Ministry of Science and Innovation, New Zealand ; Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission ; Ministry of Science and Higher Education ; National Science Centre, Poland ; Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Portugal ; JINR (Armenia) ; JINR (Belarus) ; JINR (Georgia) ; JINR (Ukraine) ; JINR (Uzbekistan) ; Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation ; Federal Agency of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation ; Russian Academy of Sciences ; Russian Foundation for Basic Research ; Ministry of Science and Technological Development of Serbia ; Secretaria de Estado de Investigacion ; Desarrollo e Innovacion and Programa Consolider-Ingenio, Spain ; ETH Board ; ETH Zurich ; PSI ; SNF ; UniZH ; Canton Zurich ; SER ; National Science Council, Taipei ; Thailand Center of Excellence in Physics ; Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology of Thailand ; National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand ; Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey ; Turkish Atomic Energy Authority ; Science and Technology Facilities Council, U.K. ; US Department of Energy ; US National Science Foundation ; Marie-Curie programme ; European Research Council ; EPLANET (European Union) ; Leventis Foundation ; A. P. Sloan Foundation ; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation ; Belgian Federal Science Policy Office ; Fonds pour la Formation a la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium) ; Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium) ; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) of Czech Republic ; Council of Science and Industrial Research, India ; Compagnia di San Paolo (Torino) ; HOMING PLUS programme of Foundation for Polish Science ; EU, Regional Development Fund ; Thalis programme ; Aristeia programme ; EU-ESF ; Greek NSRF ; Ministry of Education and ResearchSF0690030s09 ; A study of proton-proton collisions in which two b hadrons are produced in association with a Z boson is reported. The collisions were recorded at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeVwith the CMS detector at the LHC, for an integrated luminosity of 5.2 fb(-1). The b hadrons are identified by means of displaced secondary vertices, without the use of reconstructed jets, permitting the study of b-hadron pair production at small angular separation. Differential cross sections are presented as a function of the angular separation of the b hadrons and the Z boson. In addition, inclusive measurements are presented. For both the inclusive and differential studies, different ranges of Z boson momentum are considered, and each measurement is compared to the predictions from different event generators at leading-order and next-to-leading-order accuracy.