About possible contribution of intrinsic charm component to inclusive spectra of charmed mesons

Abstract

Abstract. We calculate differential energy spectra (x F -distributions) of charmed particles produced in proton-nucleus collisions, assuming the existence of intrinsic heavy quark components in the proton wave function. For the calculation, the recently proposed factorization scheme is used, based on the Color Glass Condensate theory and specially suited for predictions of a production of particles with large rapidities. It is argued that the intrinsic charm component can, if it exists, dominate in a sum of two components, intrinsic + extrinsic, of the inclusive spectrum of charmed particles produced in proton-nucleus collisions at high energies, in the region of medium x F , 0.15 < x F < 0.7, and can give noticeable contribution to atmospheric fluxes of prompt muons and neutrinos.

Intrinsic charm parton distribution functions from CTEQ-TEA global analysis

“…14 shows that the BHPS models can strongly modify the p T;Z distribution in associated production of Z boson and charm jet. Some recent research regarding intrinsic charm has focused on inclusive charm production at the LHC or Tevatron [14,[58][59][60], or on associated production of charm with a prompt photon [61][62][63][64][65]. The IC PDFs constructed here can be used to make up-to-date predictions for those processes.…”

A determination of the charm content of the proton

“…We now turn to LHC observables which do depend directly on the charm PDF, and which could thus be used for its determination. Such observables include prompt photon production in association with D mesons [109][110][111], Z boson production together with charm quarks [112][113][114] and open D meson production [115][116][117][118][119], as well as more exotic processes such as double charmonium production [21] and inclusive and diffractive Higgs production [120,121]. Here we concentrate on two illustrative cases, namely Z+charm and cc production.…”