Single inclusive heavy quark production at high-energy hadronic colliders

Theoretical uncertainties in the calculation of single inclusive b-quark and B-meson cross sections at high-energy pp colliders and the agreement between new experimental data and theory are studied in detail taking into account recent results on αs(Mz). Possible implications for the gluon distribution g(x, μ2) in the proton are discussed. The need for high-energy resummation techniques is examined by analysing the perturbative stability of the cross sections. For completeness, results for total tt pair production are briefly presented.