Impact of the LHCb $p\!+\!\!^{4}\!H\!e$ fixed-target $D^0/\bar{D^0}$ data on the intrinisic $c \bar c$ component in the nucleon

TL;DR

This study examines how new LHCb fixed-target data on $D^0$ meson production impacts understanding of the intrinsic charm component in the nucleon, revealing that standard models are insufficient without considering intrinsic charm contributions.

Contribution

The paper introduces a model incorporating intrinsic charm in the nucleon and demonstrates its significance in explaining $D^0$ production data, which traditional models fail to fully capture.

Findings

Intrinsic charm improves data description significantly.

Regularization parameter fitted to LHCb data.

Intrinsic charm probability estimated at 1.65%."

Abstract

We discuss the impact of the new LHCb fixed-target $p\!+\!^{4}\!He$ data for $D^0/{\bar D}^0$ production on the intrinsic $c \bar c$ component in the nucleon wave function. Within the scenario presented here neither the traditional gluon-gluon fusion or quark-antiquark annihilation mechanisms calculated in the $k_T$-factorization approach nor their counterparts from the collinear next-to-leading order collinear framework are sufficient to describe the transverse momentum and rapidity distributions of $D^0/{\bar D}^0$ mesons. First the $c{\bar c}$-pair production within the standard frameworks is considered. Here a crucial role of the $c \to D$ hadronization effects at low energies and low transverse momenta is found and discussed, which was not analyzed in previous studies. A contribution related to intrinsic $c \bar c$ component in the nucleon wave function is included in addition. Two models of the symmetric ($c(x) = \bar c(x)$) intrinsic charm (IC) component are considered. The intrinsic charm $g^* c \to g c$ (or $g^* {\bar c} \to g {\bar c}$) contribution needs to be regularized in order to obtain a suppression of the minijet $p_{T}$ spectrum present in the phenomenological minijet model, commonly used in Monte Carlo generators. We show that in our model the regularization parameter can be obtained from the fit to the LHCb fixed-target data under consideration here. We discuss uncertainties of our calculations (scale, charm quark mass, fragmentation function) as well as set limits on the IC probability. According to our model the intrinsic charm probability $P_{IC} = 1.65\%$ allows to significantly improve description of the LHCb data but the number is rather uncertain.