Charged current electroproduction of a charmed meson at an electron-ion collider

TL;DR

This paper calculates the amplitude for exclusive production of charmed mesons via charged current interactions at electron-ion colliders, using collinear QCD and including mass effects, highlighting its experimental accessibility.

Contribution

It provides a leading-order QCD framework for charged current charmed meson production, incorporating mass effects in coefficient functions and distribution amplitudes, which is novel.

Findings

Process can be accessed at future electron-ion colliders.

Includes $O(m_c)$ and $O(M_D)$ mass contributions.

Framework applicable for experimental studies.

Abstract

We calculate the amplitude for exclusive electroweak production of a pseudoscalar $D_s$ or a vector $D^*_s$ charmed strange meson on an unpolarized nucleon, through a charged current, in leading order in $\alpha_s$. We work in the framework of the collinear QCD approach where generalized gluon distributions factorize from perturbatively calculable coefficient functions. We include both $O(m_c)$ terms in the coefficient functions and $O(M_D)$ mass term contributions in the heavy meson distribution amplitudes. We show that this process may be accessed at future electron-ion colliders.