Proton structure from hard p-p processes at high energies

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to detect intrinsic heavy quark components in the proton through high-energy proton-proton collision experiments, proposing specific processes and experimental setups for verification.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework for identifying intrinsic heavy quark components in the proton via high-energy collision processes and suggests experimental avenues for their detection.

Findings

Intrinsic heavy quark components can influence specific high-energy processes.

Certain experimental measurements at LHC and other facilities are promising for detecting these components.

The study proposes new methods to verify the existence of intrinsic heavy quarks in the proton.

Abstract

Up to now, the existence of intrinsic (or valence-like) heavy quark components of the proton distribution function has not yet been confirmed or rejected. We show that this hypothesis can be verified at experiments on the inclusive production of the open strangeness (NA61) and at measurements of prompt photons or vector bosons accompanied by heavy flavour jets performed at LHC, CERN. Our theoretical study demonstrates that investigations of the intrinsic heavy quark contributions look very promising in hard processes like $pp\rightarrow K^\pm+X$ and $pp\rightarrow\gamma/Z/W +c(b)+X$. A possible observation of these components at the CBM, NICA experiments is discussed also.