Improved constraints on parton distributions using LHCb, ALICE and HERA heavy-flavour measurements and implications for the predictions for prompt atmospheric-neutrino fluxes

TL;DR

This paper refines parton distribution functions using recent heavy-flavour production data from HERA, LHCb, and ALICE, leading to improved predictions for prompt atmospheric-neutrino fluxes in high-energy astrophysics.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive QCD analysis incorporating new heavy-flavour measurements to better constrain gluon and sea-quark distributions at very low x values.

Findings

Enhanced constraints on gluon and sea-quark PDFs at low x

Improved predictions for prompt atmospheric-neutrino fluxes

Demonstrated the impact of collider data on astrophysical neutrino models

Abstract

The impact of measurements of heavy-flavour production in deep inelastic $ep$ scattering and in $pp$ collisions on parton distribution functions is studied in a QCD analysis at next-to-leading order. Recent combined results of inclusive and heavy-flavour production cross sections in deep inelastic scattering at HERA are investigated together with heavy-flavour production measurements at the LHC. Differential cross sections of charm- and beauty-hadron production measured by the LHCb collaboration at the centre-of-mass energies of 5, 7 and 13 TeV as well as the recent measurements of the ALICE experiment at the centre-of-mass energies of 5 and 7 TeV are explored. These data impose additional constraints on the gluon and the sea-quark distributions at low partonic fractions $x$ of the proton momentum, down to $x\approx10^{-6}$. The impact of the resulting parton distribution function in the predictions for the prompt atmospheric-neutrino fluxes is studied.