Heavy flavor production off protons and in a nuclear environment

TL;DR

This paper reviews the QCD-based phenomenology of heavy flavor production at high energies using a light-cone color-dipole approach, achieving good data agreement and making predictions for future experiments.

Contribution

It provides a unified theoretical framework for heavy flavor production phenomena, including wave function formation, quantum effects, and nuclear suppression mechanisms.

Findings

Good agreement with existing data without fitting

Predictions for future experimental outcomes

Insights into nuclear shadowing and suppression effects

Abstract

These lectures present an overview of the current status of the QCD based phenomenology for open and hidden heavy flavor production at high energies. A unified description based on the light-cone color-dipole approach is employed in all cases. A good agreement with available data is achieved without fitting to the data to be explained, and nontrivial predictions for future experiments are made. The key phenomena under discussion are: (i) formation of the wave function of a heavy quarkonium; (ii) quantum interference and coherence length effects; (iii) Landau-Pomeranchuk suppression of gluon radiation leading to gluon shadowing and nuclear suppression of heavy flavors; (iv) higher twist shadowing related to the finite size of heavy quark dipoles; (v) higher twist corrections to the leading twist gluon shadowing making it process dependent.