Charm production in association with an electroweak gauge boson at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores how charm quark production associated with electroweak bosons at the LHC can help refine our understanding of the proton's quark structure, especially the strange and charm quark distributions.

Contribution

It provides calculations of $W/Z+c$ cross sections for different PDFs and proposes measurements to extract proton quark content at high energy scales.

Findings

Cross-section differences relate to underlying PDFs.

Strange quark distribution significantly impacts $W+c$ production.

Proposed ratios can constrain quark PDFs at high $Q^2$.

Abstract

The production of charm quark jets in association with electroweak gauge bosons at the LHC can be used as a tool to constrain quark parton distribution functions (PDFs). Motivated by recent measurements at the Tevatron and LHC, we calculate cross sections for $W/Z+c$, comparing these to $W/Z+\textrm{jet}$, for various PDF sets. The cross-section differences can be understood in terms of the different underlying PDFs, with the strange quark distribution being particularly important for $W+c$ production. We suggest measurements of appropriately defined ratios and comment on how these measurements at the LHC can be used to extract information on the strange and charm content of the proton at high $Q^2$ scales.