New limits on intrinsic charm in the nucleon from global analysis of parton distributions

Abstract

We present a new global QCD analysis of parton distribution functions, allowing for possible intrinsic charm (IC) contributions in the nucleon inspired by light-front models. The analysis makes use of the full range of available high-energy scattering data for Q^2 > 1 GeV^2 and W^2 > 3.5 GeV^2, including fixed-target proton and deuteron cross sections at lower energies that were excluded in previous global analyses. The expanded data set places more stringent constraints on the momentum carried by IC, with <x>_IC at most 0.5% (corresponding to an IC normalization of ~ 1%) at the 4-sigma level for Delta chi^2 = 1. We also critically assess the impact of older EMC measurements of F_2c at large x, which favor a nonzero IC, but with very large chi^2 values.

5 pages, 3 figures; discussion of charm thresholds included; to appear in PRL

References in corpus (3)

• Parton distributions for the LHC
• The Charm Parton Content of the Nucleon
• Flavor Asymmetry of the Nucleon Sea and the Five-Quark Components of the Nucleons

Cited by in corpus (16)

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• The Sea of Quarks and Antiquarks in the Nucleon: a Review
• Limits on Intrinsic Charm Production from the SeaQuest Experiment
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• Energy Dependence of Intrinsic Charm Production: What is the Best Energy for Observation?
• Parton distribution functions and constraints on the intrinsic charm content of the proton using BHPS approach
• A Bayesian analysis of light-front models and the nucleon's charmed sigma term
• Charm, Beauty and Top at HERA
• ${\pi }^{-}p\to D^{-}{\Lambda }_c^{+}$ within the Generalized Parton Picture
• The impact of intrinsic charm on the parton distribution functions
• Phenomenological implications of the nucleon's meson cloud
• From C to Parton Sea: Bjorken-x Dependence of the PDFs
• The Nonperturbative Structure of Hadrons
• Improved determination of strange distribution function from the global analysis using BHPS model
• A perturbative QCD approach to ${\pi }^{-}p\to D^{-}{\Lambda }_c^{+}$