We present a first attempt to design a quantum circuit for the determination of the parton content of the proton through the estimation of parton distribution functions (PDFs), in the context of high energy physics (HEP). The growing interest in quantum computing and the recent developments of new algorithms and quantum hardware devices motivates the study of methodologies applied to HEP. In this work we identify architectures of variational quantum circuits suitable for PDFs representation (qPDFs). We show experiments about the deployment of qPDFs on real quantum devices, taking into consideration current experimental limitations. Finally, we perform a global qPDF determination from collider data using quantum computer simulation on classical hardware and we compare the obtained partons and related phenomenological predictions involving hadronic processes to modern PDFs.
A measurement of the Lamb shift of 49,881.88(76) GHz in muonic hydrogen in conjunction with theoretical estimates of the proton structure effects was recently used to deduce an accurate but rather small radius of the proton. Such an important shift in the understanding of fundamental values needs reconfirmation. Using a different approach with electromagnetic form factors of the proton, we obtain a new expression for the transition energy, $Δ= E_{2P_{{3}/{2}}}^{f=2} - E_{2S_{{1}/{2}}}^{f=1}$, in muonic hydrogen and deduce a proton radius, $r_p = 0.831$ fm.
Two-jet production from the direct photon contribution at HERA is a sensitive measure of the small-$x$ gluon in the proton. We propose measurements of ratios of the jet cross-sections which will clearly distinguish between gluons with or without singular behaviour at small $x$. Furthermore, we show that analogous ratio measurements for the resolved photon contribution provide a sensitive way of determining the gluon distribution in the photon.
We investigate the parity-violating analyzing power in neutron capture on the proton at thermal energies in the framework of chiral effective field theory. By combining this analysis with a previous analysis of parity violation in proton-proton scattering, we are able to extract the size of the weak pion-nucleon coupling constant. The uncertainty is significant and dominated by the experimental error which is expected to be reduced soon.
We investigate the QED Compton process (QEDCS) in $e p \to e γp$ and $e p \to e γX$, together with the major background coming from the virtual Compton scattering (VCS), where the photon is emitted from the hadronic vertex. We suggest new kinematical constraints which suppress the VCS background and are furthermore suitable for the extraction of the equivalent photon content of the proton at the HERA collider. We show that the cross section, commonly expressed in terms of the proton structure functions, is reasonably well described by the equivalent photon approximation of the proton, also in …
Precisely measured electron-proton elastic scattering cross sections [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 105}, 242002 (2010)] are reanalyzed to evaluate their strength for determining the rms charge radius ($R_{\rm E}$) of the proton. More than half of the cross sections at lowest $Q^2$ are fit using two single-parameter form-factor models, with the first based on a dipole parametrization, and the second on a linear fit to a conformal-mapping variable. These low-$Q^2$ fits extrapolate the slope of the form factor to $Q^2$=0 and determine $R_{\rm E}$ values of approximately 0.84 and 0.89~fm, respectively. F…
We investigate the QED Compton process (QEDCS) in longitudinally polarized lepton-proton scattering both in the elastic and inelastic channels and show that the cross section can be expressed in terms of the polarized equivalent photon distribution of the proton. We provide the necessary kinematical constraints to extract the polarized photon content of the proton using this process at HERMES, COMPASS and eRHIC. We also discuss the suppression of the major background process coming from virtual Compton scattering. We point out that such an experiment can give valuable information on $g_1(x_B, …
Measurement of $Z$ bosons produced in association with charm jets $(Zc)$ in proton-proton collisions in the forward region provides a direct probe of a potential non-perturbative (intrinsic) charm component in the proton wave function. We provide a detailed study of the potential to measure $Zc$ production at the LHCb experiment in Runs 2 and 3 of the LHC. The sensitivity to valence-like (sea-like) intrinsic charm is predicted to be $\langle x \rangle_{\rm IC} \gtrsim 0.3\%(1\%)$. The impact of intrinsic charm on Higgs production at the LHC, including $Hc$, is also discussed in detail.
Determining how much spin is carried by gluon in a polarized proton is a fundamental problem which cannot be resolved by completely inclusive deep inelastic measurements. Hadroproduction of heavy flavors is very sensitive to the gluon content of hadrons. We show that $χ_2 (3555)$ production in polarized proton-proton collisions is a good candidate reaction to address this challenging question.
The contribution of strange sea quarks to the proton mass and spin, as well as the related pion-nucleon sigma term, are briefly revisited, in the light of new experimental and lattice results. Also the predictions of chiral perturbation theory for these quantities are discussed.
We propose a new experimental method to probe the photon parton distribution function inside the proton (photon PDF) at LHC energies. The method is based on the measurement of dilepton production from the $γp\rightarrow\ell^+\ell^-+X$ reaction in proton--lead collisions. These experimental conditions guarantee a clean environment, both in terms of reconstruction of the final state and in terms of possible background. We firstly calculate the cross sections for this process with collinear photon PDFs, where we identify optimal choice of the scale, in analogy to deep inelastic scattering kinemat…
We present a comparative analysis of the impact of the non-perturbative intrinsic charm quark content of the proton on differential cross section of $γ+c $-jet in $ pp $ and $ p\bar{p} $ collisions, for the kinematic regions that are sensitive to this contribution. We discuss the $ Q^2 $ evolution of intrinsic quark distributions and present a code which provide these distributions as a function of $ x $ and $ Q^2 $ for any arbitrary Fock state probability. For the $ p\bar{p} $ collisions at the Tevatron, the results are compared with the recent experimental data of D0 at $\sqrt{s} =1.96$ TeV …
A new technique for computing the strangeness content of the proton on the lattice is described. It is applied to the calculation of the strange quark contribution to the proton's spin, specifically to the evaluation of the proton matrix element of the strange quark axial current. Preliminary results are not in disagreement with the EMC experiment. NOTE: This paper is available only in postscript form.
Considerable progress has been made in our knowledge of the spin distribution within the proton. The recently measured limits on polarized gluons in the proton suggest polarized gluons contribute very modestly to the proton spin. We will show that a modern, relativistic and chirally symmetric description of the nucleon structure naturally explain the current proton spin data. Most of the "missing" spin is carried by confined quark and antiquarks' angular momentum.
In this study, the proton is taken as an ensemble of quark-gluon Fock states. Using the principle of balance that every Fock state should be balanced with all of the nearby Fock states (denoted as the balance model), instead of the principle of detailed balance that any two nearby Fock states should be balanced with each other (denoted as the detailed balance model), the probabilities of finding every Fock state of the proton are obtained. The balance model can be taken as a revised version of the detailed balance model, which can give an excellent description of the light flavor sea asymmetry…
It is well known that in lowest order the skyrmion model of the nucleon gives vanishing spin content. With new data indicating a proton spin content $ΔΣ= 0.22\pm 0.14,$ it is an increasing challenge to find ways in which the skyrmion can move away from the null result. We show here that a particular term in the skyrmion lagrangian in SU(3) involving six derivatives of the field can, with plausible parameters, yield a spin content consistent with present experiment.
Precision phenomenology at the LHC requires accounting for both higher-order QCD and electroweak corrections as well as for photon-initiated subprocesses. Building upon the recent NNPDF3.1 fit, in this work the photon content of the proton is determined within a global analysis supplemented by the LUXqed constraint relating the photon PDF to lepton-proton scattering structure functions: NNPDF3.1luxQED. The uncertainties on the resulting photon PDF are at the level of a few percent, with photons carrying up to 0.5% of the proton's momentum. We study the phenomenological implications of NNPDF3.1…
It is shown that the difference between the c-quark proton structure functions calculated in the k_T-factorization approach using different unintegrated gluon distribution functions is the same order as the difference between results obtained in the parton model and in the k_T-factorization approach.
The gluonic widths of four leading glueball candidates are determined from their production in radiative quarkonium decays, allowing quantitative estimation of their glue content. Lattice predictions for the scalar and tensor channels seem to be in reasonable agareement with present data (allowing for mixing with $q \bar{q}$ states). However there is a glueball-like-state in the pseudoscalar spectrum whose mass is considerably lower than expected from lattice estimates.
Contributions to the quark flavor and spin observables from the intrinsic charm in the proton are discussed in the SU(4) quark meson fluctuation model. Our results suggest that the probability of finding the intrinsic charm in the proton is less than 1%. The intrinsic charm helicity is small and negative, $Δc \simeq -(0.003\sim 0.015)$. The fraction of the total quark helicity carried by the intrinsic charm is less than 2%, and $c_\up/c_\dw$=35/67.
In the SU3 Skyrme model the electric quadrupole moments of $\frac{3}{2}^+$ baryons show a strong sensitivity with respect to flavor distortions in baryon wavefunctions. SU3 symmetric wavefunctions lead to quadrupole moments proportional to the charge of the baryon whereas for strongly broken flavor symmetry a proportionality to baryonic isospin emerges. Since the flavor distortions in the wavefunctions also determine the strangeness content of the proton the Skyrme model provides a link between both quantities.
We study the sensitivity of the HELLAZ and Borexino solar neutrino experiments on discriminating the neutrino species nu_e, anti-nu_e, nu_{mu,tau}, anti-nu_{mu,tau}, and nu_{sterile} using the difference in the recoil electron kinetic energy spectra in elastic neutrino-electron scattering. We find that one can observe a non-vanishing nu_{mu,tau} component in the solar neutrino flux, especially when the nu_e survival probability is low. Also, if the data turn out to be consistent with nu_e <-> nu_{mu,tau} oscillations, an anti-nu_e component can be excluded effectively.
An analysis procedure is proposed to measure the antiquark distributions in the proton over the region 0.01 < x < 0.1. The procedure involves the measurement of high p_t asymmetric direct photon and jet final states in pp interactions. This measurement can be made at the RHIC collider running in pp mode at an energy of sqrt(s)=500 GeV/c. This analysis identifies a region of phase space where the contribution from quark-antiquark annihilation uncharacteristically approaches the magnitude of the contribution from the leading process, quark-gluon Compton scattering. The forward-backward angular a…
The contributions of direct knockout processes, in addition to the diffractive production and one-pion-exchange processes associated with the phi-rho-pi and phi-gamma-pi couplings, to the polarization observables of the phi photoproduction from proton are calculated. We make use of Pomeron-photon analogy and a relativistic harmonic oscillator quark model. We find that some of the double polarization observables are very sensitive to a possible (s s-bar) admixture in the proton. It arises from the difference in the spin structures of the three different amplitudes. This suggests that such measu…
We investigate the feasibility of constraining parton distribution functions in the proton through a comparison with data on semi-inclusive deep-inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering. Specifically, we reweight replicas of these distributions according to how well they reproduce recent, very precise charged kaon multiplicity measurements and analyze how this procedure optimizes the determination of the sea quark densities and improves their uncertainties. The results can help to shed new light on the long standing question on the size of the flavor and charge symmetry breaking among quarks of rad…
We study two experimental ways to measure the heavy-quark content of the proton: using the Callan-Gross ratio $R(x,Q^2)=F_L/F_T$ and/or azimuthal $\cos(2φ)$ asymmetry in deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering. Our approach is based on the perturbative stability of the QCD predictions for these two quantities. We resume the mass logarithms of the type $α_{s}\ln\left( Q^{2}/m^{2}\right)$ and conclude that heavy-quark densities in the nucleon can, in principle, be determined from data on the Callan-Gross ratio and/or azimuthal asymmetry. In particular, the charm content of the proton can be mea…
Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) model the parton content of the proton. Among the many collaborations which focus on PDF determination, NNPDF pioneered the use of Neural Networks to model the probability of finding partons (quarks and gluons) inside the proton with a given energy and momentum. In this proceedings we make use of state of the art techniques to modernize the NNPDF methodology and study different models and optimizers in order to improve the quality of the PDF: improving both the quality and efficiency of the fits. We also present the evolutionary_keras library, a Keras imple…
We investigate a double-spin asymmetry for the semi-inclusive $Λ$ hyperon production in the longitudinally deep inelastic lepton-proton scattering, the sign of which can provide us with important information about the strange quark helicity distribution in the proton.On the basis of the interpretation of the longitudinal deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering data as a negative strange quark polarization in the proton and the preliminary results on the measurement of the longitudinal $Λ$ polarization at the $Z$ resonance in electron-positron annihilation,we predict a minus sign for the sugge…
We calculate with chiral symmetry the parton contents of the proton based on a two-component wave function. The calculation results give significant sea-quark contents and, especially, the intrinsic gluon polarization produced at a more fundamental level.
Although the Higgs boson has been discovered, its self-couplings are poorly constrained. This leaves the nature of the Higgs boson undetermined. Motivated by different Higgs potential scenarios other than the Landau-Ginzburg type in the standard model, we systematically organize various new physics scenarios -- elementary Higgs, Nambu-Goldstone Higgs, Coleman-Weinberg Higgs, and Tadpole-induced Higgs, etc. We find that double-Higgs production at the 27 TeV high energy LHC can be used to discriminate different Higgs potential scenarios, while it is necessary to use triple-Higgs production at a …
Constraints on the intrinsic charm probability $\wccm = P_{{\mathrm{c}\bar \mathrm{c}} / \mathrm{p}}$ in the proton are obtained for the first time from LHC measurements. The ATLAS Collaboration data for the production of prompt photons, accompanied by a charm-quark jet in pp collisions at $\sqrt s = 8 $ TeV, are used. The upper limit \mbox{$\wccm < 1.93$~\%} is obtained at the 68~\% confidence level. This constraint is primarily determined from the theoretical scale and systematical experimental uncertainties. Suggestions for reducing these uncertainties are discussed. The implications of int…
We investigate the hyperon semileptonic decays and the quark spin content of the proton $ΔΣ$ taking into account flavor SU(3) symmetry breaking. Symmetry breaking is implemented with the help of the chiral quark-soliton model in an approach, in which the dynamical parameters are fixed by the experimental data for six hyperon semileptonic decay constants. As a result we predict the unmeasured decay constants, particularly for $Ξ^0 \to Σ^+$, which will be soon measured and examine the effect of the SU(3) symmetry breaking on the spin content $ΔΣ$ of the proton. Unfortunately large experimental e…
We demonstrate that the shower-to-shower fluctuations of the muon content of extensive air showers correlate with the fluctuations of a variable of the first interaction of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays, which is computed from the fraction of energy carried by the hadrons that sustain the hadronic cascade. The influence of subsequent stages of the shower development is found to play a sub-dominant role. As a consequence, the shower-to-shower distribution of the muon content is a direct probe of the hadron energy spectrum of interactions beyond 100 TeV center of mass energies.
We develop tools to determine the gluonic content of a resonance of known mass, width and $J^{PC}$ from its branching fraction in radiative quarkonium decays and production cross section in $γγ$ collisions. We test the procedures by applying them to known $q\bar{q}$ mesons, then analyze four leading glueball candidates. We identify inconsistencies in data for $J/ψ\to γf_0(1500)$ and $J/ψ\to γf_J(1710)$ whose resolution can quantify their glueball status.When $Γ(f_0(1500) \to γγ)$ and $Γ(f_J(1710) \to γγ)$ are known, the $n\bar{n}, s\bar{s},gg$ mixing angles can be determined. The enigmatic sit…
We present a new study on helicity amplitudes and cross sections for the exclusive production of $ρ$ mesons at the EIC in high-energy factorization. In this framework the analytic expression of amplitudes takes the form of a convolution between an off-shell impact factor, depicting the ($γ^* \to ρ$) transition, and a nonperturbative density, known as Unintegrated Gluon Distribution (UGD) that encodes information about the proton structure at low $x$ and evolves according to the BFKL equation. We come out with an evidence that observables sensitive to the polarizations of the incoming virtual p…
After a brief review of the experimental results obtained in deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scatterings and the Drell-Yan processes and their implications for the spin and flavor contents of the nucleon, we suggest that those features, that are contrary to the expectations of the naive quark model, can all be accounted for in the chiral quark model of Georgi and Manohar. In our formulation of the chiral quark model, the $η^{\prime }$ meson is seen to play an important role.
We analyse the proton-induced Drell-Yan production in both the flavor asymmetry and isospin breaking explanations for the violation of the Gottfried sum rule. Consequences from three different forms of corrections to the flavor and isospin symmetric parton distributions are examined. It is found that the calculated results are sensitive to the choices of parameters and parton distributions, and to the ways the corrections are introduced. All three forms of corrections could be consistent with the recent Fermilab Experiment E772 data for the ratio of cross section $R=σ_{W}/σ_{IS}$ and for the s…
We investigate the production of the weak bosons $W^+$, $W^-$ and $Z$ at the LHC as a function of their rapidity, reconstructed {\it experimentally} from their leptonic decay. We show that the measurements provide a powerful tool for constraining the parton distribution functions, as was already the case for the lower energy $p\bar{p}$ collider data. We study the charge asymmetry determining the $u$ and $d$ distribution functions using the reconstructed $W^+$, $W^-$ rapidities. We also show how the ratio of the $W$ and $Z$ boson rapidity distributions directly probes the charm quark distributi…
A potential explanation [U.~D.~Jentschura, Phys.\ Rev.\ A {\bf 88}, 062514 (2013)] of the proton radius puzzle originating from the non-perturbative lepton-pair content of the proton is studied. Well-defined quantities that depend on this lepton-pair content are evaluated. Each is found to be of the order of $10({α\over π})^2$, so that we find such a lepton-pair content exists in the proton. However, we argue that this relatively large result and general features of loop diagrams rule out the possibility of lepton-pair content as an explanation of the proton radius puzzle. In addition, the con…
Using the LHCb and ALICE detectors in the fixed-target mode at the LHC offers unprecedented possibilities to study the quark, gluon and heavy-quark content of the proton and nuclei in the poorly known region of the high-momentum fractions. We review our projections for studies of Drell-Yan, charm, beauty and quarkonium production with both detector set-ups used with various nuclear targets and the LHC proton beams. Based on this, we show the expected improvement in the determination of the quark, charm and gluon proton and nuclear PDFs as well as discuss the implication for a better understand…
The polarization observables in phi meson photoproduction is studied to probe the strangeness content of the nucleon. In addition to the dominant diffractive production and the one-pion-exchange process, we take into account the direct knockout mechanism that arises from the possible hidden strangeness content of the nucleon. We find that some double polarization observables are very sensitive to the strangeness content of the proton because of the different spin structures of the amplitudes associated with different mechanisms. This suggests that such measurements could be very useful in prob…
Different methods to extract the polarized parton densities from the world polarized DIS data are considered. The higher twist corrections $h^N(x)/Q^2$ to the spin dependent proton and neutron $g_1$ structure functions are found to be non-negligible and important in the QCD analysis of the present experimental data. Their role in determining the polarized parton densities in the framework of the different approaches is discussed.
The charm structure function, ($F_2^{c\overline{c}}(x, Q^2)$), is calculated in the framework of the $k_t$-factorization formalism by using the unintegrated parton distribution functions (UPDF), which are generated through the Kimber et al. (KMR) and Martin et al. (MRW) procedures. The Martin group (MMHT2014) parton distribution functions (PDF) is used as the input PDF for the corresponding UPDF. The resulted $F_2^{c\overline{c}}(x, Q^2)$ is compared with the predicted data and the calculations given by the ZEUS and H1 collaborations, the parton pQCD theory, i.e. the general-mass variable-flav…
The Spin Physics Detector (SPD) is a future multipurpose experiment foreseen to run at the NICA collider, which is currently under construction at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, Dubna, Russia). The physics program of the experiment is based on collisions of longitudinally and transversely polarized protons and deuterons at $\sqrt{s}$ up to 27 GeV and luminosity up to 10$^{32}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$. The SPD will operate as a universal facility for comprehensive study of unpolarized and polarized gluon content of the nucleon, using different complementary probes such as: charmonia…
We calculate the azimuthal dependence of the heavy-quark-initiated ${\cal O}(α_{s})$ contributions to the lepton-nucleon deep inelastic scattering (DIS). It is shown that, contrary to the photon-gluon fusion (GF) component, the photon-quark scattering (QS) mechanism is practically $\cos2ϕ$-independent. We investigate the possibility to discriminate experimentally between the GF and QS contributions using their strongly different azimuthal distributions. Our analysis shows that the GF and QS predictions for the azimuthal $\cos2ϕ$ asymmetry are quantitatively well defined in the fixed flavor num…
In the present paper, we present detailed discussions on the hadronic production of $Ξ_{cc}$ at a fixed target experiment at the LHC (After@LHC). The charm quarks in hadron could be either extrinsic or intrinsic. By using the BHPS model as the intrinsic charm distribution function in proton, we observe that even if by setting the proportion of finding the intrinsic charm in a proton as $A_{\rm in}=1\%$, total cross sections for the $g+c$ and $c+c$ production mechanisms shall be enhanced by nearly two times. Thus the number of $Ξ_{cc}$ events to be generated at the After@LHC can be greatly enha…
The part of the proton spin $Σ$ carried by $u, d, s$ quarks is calculated in the framework of the QCD sum rules in the external fields. The operators up to dimension 9 are accounted. An important contribution comes from the operator of dimension 3, which in the limit of massless $u, d, s$ quarks is equal to the derivative of QCD topological susceptibility $χ^{\prime} (0)$. The comparison with the experimental data on $Σ$ gives $χ^{\prime}(0)= (2.3 \pm 0.6) \times 10^{-3} ~ GeV^2$. The limits on $Σ$ and $χ^{\prime}(0)$ are found from selfconsistency of the sum rule, $Σ\ga 0.05,~~ χ^{\prime} (0)…
We calculate the form factor of the quark energy momentum tensor and thereby extract the quark orbital angular momentum of the nucleon. The calculation is done on a quenched $16^3 \times 24$ lattice at $β= 6.0$ and with Wilson fermions at $κ$ = 0.148, 0.152, 0.154 and 0.155. We calculate the disconnected insertion stochastically which employs the $Z_2$ noise with an unbiased subtraction. This proves to be an efficient method of reduce the error from the noise. We find that the total quark contribution to the proton spin is $0.29 \pm 0.07$. From this we deduce that the quark orbital angular mom…
We present an unbiased determination of the charm content of the proton, in which the charm parton distribution function (PDF) is parametrized on the same footing as the light quarks and the gluon in a global PDF analysis. This determination relies on the calculation of deep-inelastic structure functions in the FONLL scheme, generalized to account for massive charm-initiated contributions. In contrast to the usual situation in which the charm PDF is assumed to be generated perturbatively by pair radiation off gluons and light quarks, vanishing at a scale set by the value of the charm mass m_c,…
Recently, two photon PDF sets based on implementations of the LUX ansatz into the CT18 global analysis were released. In CT18lux, the photon PDF is calculated directly using the LUX master formula for all scales, $μ$. In an alternative realization, CT18qed, the photon PDF is initialized at the starting scale, $μ_0$, using the LUX formulation and evolved to higher scales $μ(>μ_0)$ with a combined QED+QCD kernel at $\mathcal{O}(α),~\mathcal{O}(αα_s)$ and $\mathcal{O}(α^2)$. In the small-$x$ region, the photon PDF uncertainty is mainly induced by the quark and gluon PDFs, through the perturbative…
We investigate the QED Compton process (both elastic and inelastic) in unpolarized and longitudinally polarized electron-proton scattering. The cross section can be expressed in terms of the equivalent photon distribution of the proton. We provide the necessary kinematical cuts to extract the photon content of the proton at HERMES and eRHIC. We point out that such a process can give valuable information on $g_1(x_B, Q^2)$ in the small $x_B$, broad $Q^2$ region at eRHIC and especially in the lower $Q^2$, medium $x_B$ region in fixed target experiments.
We advocate charmed-hadron inclusive hadroproduction as a laboratory to probe intrinsic charm (IC) inside the colliding hadrons. Working at next-to-leading order in the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme endowed with non-perturbative fragmentation functions recently extracted from a global fit to e^+e^- annihilation data from KEKB, CESR, and LEP1, we first assess the sensitivity of Tevatron data of D^0, D^+, and D^{*+} inclusive production to the IC parameterizations provided by Pumplin et al. We then argue that similar data from pp collisions at RHIC would have the potential to discri…
The part of the proton spin $Σ$ carried by $u, d, s$ quarks is calculated in the framework of the QCD sum rules in the external fields. The operators up to dimension 9 are accounted. An important contribution comes from the operator of dimension 3, which in the limit of massless $u, d, s$ quarks is equal to the derivative of QCD topological susceptibility $χ^{\prime} (0)$. The comparison with the experimental data on $Σ$ gives $χ^{\prime}(0)= (2.3 \pm 0.6) \times 10^{-3} ~ GeV^2$. The limits on $Σ$ and $χ^{\prime}(0)$ are found from selfconsistency of the sum rule, $Σ= 0.33\pm 0.20$, $χ^{\prim…
We advocate charmed-hadron inclusive hadroproduction as a laboratory to probe intrinsic charm (IC) inside the colliding hadrons. Working at next-to-leading order in the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme endowed with non-perturbative fragmentation functions recently extracted from a global fit to e^+e^- annihilation data from KEKB, CESR, and LEP1, we first assess the sensitivity of Tevatron data of D^0, D^+, and D^{*+} inclusive production to the IC parameterizations provided by Pumplin et al. We then argue that similar data from pp collisions at RHIC would have the potential to discri…
We study charm production in charged-current deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) using the xFitter framework. Recent results from the LHC have focused renewed attention on the determination of the strange-quark parton distribution function (PDF) and the DIS charm process provides important complementary constraints on this quantity. We examine the current PDF uncertainty, and use LHeC pseudodata to estimate the potential improvement from this proposed facility. As xFitter implements both fixed-flavor- and variable-flavor-number schemes, we can compare the impact of these different theoretical choi…
An explicit pionic component of the nucleon may be identified by measuring polarized $Δ^{++}$ fragments produced in deep-inelastic scattering off polarized protons. The pion-exchange model predicts highly correlated polarizations of the $Δ^{++}$ and target proton, in marked contrast with the competing diquark fragmentation process.
