Polarization effects in double open-charm production at LHCb

TL;DR

This paper explores how polarization effects, specifically from spin correlations of gluons inside unpolarized protons, influence double open-charm production at LHCb, highlighting potential experimental signatures.

Contribution

It introduces the study of polarization effects in double open-charm production, revealing their impact on cross sections and proposing observables for experimental investigation.

Findings

Longitudinally polarized gluons significantly affect the cross section.

Polarization has a moderate impact on the shape of distributions.

Suggested measurements could detect or constrain polarization effects.

Abstract

Double open-charm production is one of the most promising channels to disentangle single from double parton scattering (DPS) and study different properties of DPS. Several studies of the DPS contributions have been made. A missing ingredient so far has been the study of polarization effects, arising from spin correlations between the two partons inside an unpolarized proton. We investigate the impact polarization has on the double open-charm cross section. We show that the longitudinally polarized gluons can give significant contributions to the cross section, but for most of the considered kinematic region only have a moderate effect on the shape. We compare our findings to the LHCb data in the D0D0 final state, identify observables where polarization does have an impact on the distribution of the final state particles, and suggest measurements which could lead to first experimental indications of, or limits on, polarization in DPS.