Charm-quark production in deep-inelastic neutrino scattering at NNLO in QCD

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed NNLO QCD calculation of charm-quark production in neutrino deep-inelastic scattering, including mass effects, and compares predictions with experimental data to refine strange quark distribution models.

Contribution

It introduces a fully differential NNLO calculation with charm mass dependence for neutrino scattering, enhancing theoretical precision and data comparison.

Findings

NNLO corrections are significant in certain kinematic regions.

Predictions align well with dimuon production data.

Results aid in better determining the strange quark distribution.

Abstract

We present a fully differential next-to-next-to-leading order calculation of charm quark production in charged-current deep-inelastic scattering, with full charm-quark mass dependence. The next-to-next-to-leading order corrections in perturbative quantum chromodynamics are found to be comparable in size to the next-to-leading order corrections in certain kinematic regions. We compare our predictions with data on dimuon production in (anti-)neutrino scattering from a heavy nucleus. Our results can be used to improve the extraction of the parton distribution function of a strange quark in the nucleon.