Measurement of the Forward-Backward Asymmetry in the Production of B± Mesons in pp¯ Collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV

We present a measurement of the forward-backward asymmetry in the production of B± mesons, AFB(B±), using B± → J/ψK± decays in 10.4 fb-1 of pp¯ collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV collected by the D0 experiment during Run II of the Tevatron collider. A nonzero asymmetry would indicate a preference for a particular flavor, i.e., b quark or b¯ antiquark, to be produced in the direction of the proton beam. We extract AFB(B±) from a maximum likelihood fit to the difference between the numbers of forward- and backward-produced B± mesons. We measure an asymmetry consistent with zero: AFB(B±) = [-0.24 ± 0.41 (stat) ± 0.19 (syst)]%.