Heavy-Quark Correlations in Direct Photon-Photon Collisions

Abstract

In two-photon collisions at LEP2 and a future $e^+e^-$ linear collider heavy quarks (mainly charm) will be pair-produced rather copiously. The production via direct and resolved photons can be distinguished experimentally via a remnant-jet tag. We study correlations of the heavy quarks at next-to-leading order in QCD in the direct channel, which is free from phenomenological parton densities in the photon. These correlations are therefore directly calculable in perturbative QCD and provide a stringent test of the production mechanism.