Hadronic production of S-wave and P-wave charmed b mesons via heavy quark fragmentation

At hadron colliders the dominant production mechanism of (<(b)over bar c>) mesons with large transverse momentum is because of parton fragmentation. We compute the rates and transverse momentum spectra for production of S-wave and P-wave (<(b)over bar c>) mesons at the Fermilab Tevatron via the direct fragmentation of the bottom antiquark as well as the Altarelli-Parisi-induced gluon fragmentation. Since all the radially and orbitally excited (<(b)over bar c>) mesons below the ED flavor threshold will cascade into the pseudoscalar ground state B-c through electromagnetic and/or hadronic transitions, they all contribute to the inclusive production of B-c. The contributions of the excited S-wave and P-wave states to the inclusive production of B-c are 58 and 23 %, respectively, and hence significant.