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Production Mechanisms for $B_c$ Mesons in Photon--Photon Collisions

Using photon-photon collisions as a particularly transparent study case we investigate the production mechanisms for $B_c$ mesons. In nonrelativistic approximation and to $O(α^2α_s^2)$ it is shown that recombination of $\bar{b}$- and $c$-quarks dominates by far over $\bar{b}$ and $c$ fragmentation. This dominance persists up to the highest accessible transverse momenta and leads to distributions in energy which differ completely from the spectra expected on the basis of the fragmentation functions. For processes in which a $b \bar{b}$-pair is radiated from a primary $c$-quark, the fragmentation description is found to be inadequate. We anticipate important implications of these results for hadronic production of heavy quark resonances. Using realistic photon spectra we predict two-photon production rates for $B_c$ and $B_c^*$ at present and future $e^+e^-$-machines.