Recent QCD results from the xFitter project: Probing the strange content of the proton with charm production in charged current at LHeC

TL;DR

This paper uses the xFitter software to analyze charm production in charged-current deep-inelastic scattering, aiming to improve understanding of the strange quark distribution in the proton with current data and future LHeC pseudodata.

Contribution

It demonstrates the application of xFitter to study the strange quark PDF and compares different theoretical schemes, illustrating its capabilities in QCD analysis.

Findings

Current s(x) constraints are limited.

LHeC pseudodata can significantly improve s(x) determination.

Different flavor schemes impact the interpretation of charm production.

Abstract

We investigate charm production in charged-current deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) using the xFitter program. xFitter is an open-source software framework for the determination of PDFs and the analysis of QCD physics, and has been used for a variety of LHC studies. The study of charged current DIS charm production provides an important perspective on the strange quark PDF, s(x). We make use of the xFitter tools to study the present s(x) constraints, and then use LHeC pseudodata to infer how these might improve. Furthermore, as xFitter implements both Fixed Flavor and Variable Flavor number schemes, we can examine the impact of these different theoretical choices; this highlights some interesting aspects of multi-scale calculations. This study provides a practical illustration of the many features of xFitter.