Measurement of bottom quark production in two photon collisions

The cross section for bottom quark production in two-photon collisions, sigma( e+e- → e+e- bb¯X), is measured for the first time. The measurement is performed with the L3 detector at the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider at the European Center for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN). The data corresponds to 410 pb-1 taken at center-of-mass energies from 189 GeV to 202 GeV. Hadrons containing a bottom quark are identified by detecting electrons or muons from their semi-leptonic decays. The measured cross section is in excess of the Next to Leading Order QCD prediction by a factor of three.