Heavy Quark Electroproduction and the Heavy Quark Contribution to the Proton Structure

TL;DR

This paper presents new experimental results on charm and beauty quark production at HERA, comparing them with QCD calculations and exploring their impact on understanding proton structure and fragmentation universality.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive comparison of heavy quark contributions to the proton structure function using multiple experimental techniques.

Findings

Heavy quark contributions to F_2 are quantified.

Differential cross sections agree with NLO QCD predictions.

Charm fragmentation universality is tested.

Abstract

New results on charm and beauty electroproduction from the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations at the ep collider HERA are presented. Differential cross sections are compared to a next-to-leading order QCD calculation. The heavy quark contributions, F_2^{cc} and F_2^{bb}, to the proton structure function F_2 are compared using different experimental techniques. Also, results are shown on the charm fragmentation function, thereby testing the universality of fragmentation.