We present a measurement of the cross section and the first
measurement of the heavy flavor content of associated direct photon + muon
events produced in hadronic collisions. These measurements come from a
sample of 1.8 TeV p anti-p collisions recorded with the Collider Detector at
Fermilab. Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) predicts that these events are
primarily due to Compton scattering process cg --> c gamma, with the final
state charm quark producing a muon. The cross section for events with a
photon transverse momentum between 12 and 40 GeV/c is measured to be 46.8
+/- 6.3 +/- 7.5 pb, which is two standard deviations below the most recent
theoretical calculation. A significant fraction of the events in the sample
contain a final-state bottom quark. The ratio of charm to bottom production
is measured to be 2.4 +/- 1.2, in good agreement with QCD models.
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Updated: Tuesday, 2001 June 12 09:15:30 CDT automatically from input from Carol Picciolo