Heavy Quarks in DIS (Theory)

TL;DR

This paper reviews methods for incorporating finite heavy quark masses in deep inelastic scattering, focusing on variable flavour number schemes that smoothly interpolate between threshold and high-energy regimes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the VFNS approach, highlighting its role in accurately modeling heavy quark effects across different energy scales.

Findings

VFNS effectively interpolates between threshold and massless regimes

Improves accuracy of DIS predictions involving heavy quarks

Addresses challenges in finite mass corrections

Abstract

I review the various methods for taking account of finite quark masses in DIS and related processes. I pay particular attention to the so-called variable flavour number schemes (VFNS) which are designed to extrapolate smoothly from the region near threshold of production of heavy quark pairs to the region where the quarks become effectively massless.