Intrinsic Charm at High-Q^2 and HERA Data

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of HERA data to detect intrinsic charm in the proton at high-Q^2, finding modest enhancements but significant probing capability for the intrinsic charm hypothesis.

Contribution

It provides predictions for intrinsic charm effects at high-Q^2 and assesses HERA's potential to detect them, incorporating constraints from low-energy data.

Findings

Modest enhancements in structure functions due to intrinsic charm

Presence of peaking near 200 GeV in leptoquark mass variable

HERA can substantially probe the intrinsic charm hypothesis

Abstract

We compute the predictions of intrinsic charm for deep-inelastic scattering at high-Q^2 and compare to HERA data. With the inclusion of constraints from low-energy data, enhancements beyond the predictions of standard structure functions are very modest, but peaking in the leptoquark mass variable is present near 200 GeV. Ultimately, the ability of HERA to probe the intrinsic charm hypothesis could be very substantial.