$D$ - meson production at very forward rapidities: estimating the intrinsic charm contribution

Abstract

We study $D$ - meson production at forward rapidities taking into account the non - linear effects in the QCD dynamics and the intrinsic charm component of the proton wave function. The total cross section, the rapidity distributions and the Feynman - $x$ distributions are calculated for $pp$ collisions at different center of mass energies. Our results show that, at the LHC, the intrinsic charm component changes the $D$ rapidity distributions in a region which is beyond the coverage of the LHCb detectors. At higher energies the IC component dominates the $y$ and $x_F$ distributions exactly in the range where the produced $D$ mesons decay and contribute the most to the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux measured by the ICECUBE Collaboration. We compute the $x_F$ - distributions and demonstrate that they are enhanced at LHC energies by approximately one order of magnitude in the $0.2\le x_F\le 0.8$ range.

11 pages, 8 figures. v2: new references added, minor changes in the text, changes in the figures; v3: new results with better treatment for the fragmentation function of partons into D0/D0bar mesons; conclusions unchanged; matches the version published in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (26)

• The Color Glass Condensate
• Prompt neutrino fluxes from atmospheric charm
• Impact parameter dependent colour glass condensate dipole model
• The Charm Parton Content of the Nucleon
• Direct numerical solution of the coordinate space Balitsky-Kovchegov equation at next to leading order
• Saturation QCD predictions with heavy quarks at HERA
• New limits on intrinsic charm in the nucleon from global analysis of parton distributions
• Measurement of prompt J/psi and beauty hadron production cross sections at mid-rapidity in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
• Prompt atmospheric neutrino fluxes: perturbative QCD models and nuclear effects
• Precision determination of the small-$x$ gluon from charm production at LHCb
• Exclusive vector meson production at HERA from QCD with saturation
• Saturation physics at HERA and RHIC: An unified description
• Open charm hadroproduction and the charm content of the proton
• Geometric Scaling at RHIC and LHC
• Diffractive Higgs Production from Intrinsic Heavy Flavors in the Proton
• Quarkonium Physics at a Fixed-Target Experiment using the LHC Beams
• Production of q bar-q Pairs in Proton-Nucleus Collisions at High Energies
• On the Charm Contribution to the Atmospheric Neutrino Flux
• Measurement of D^0, D^+, D_s^+ and D^{*+} Production in Fixed Target 920 GeV Proton-Nucleus Collisions
• Forward hadron production in high energy pA collisions: from RHIC to LHC
• Heavy flavor production in high-energy $pp$ collisions: color dipole description
• The Physics of Heavy Quark Distributions in Hadrons: Collider Tests
• A Determination of the Charm Content of the Proton
• Heavy flavor production in pA collisions
• The impact of intrinsic charm on the parton distribution functions
• Recent progress on intrinsic charm

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Intrinsic charm contribution to the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux
• Intrinsic charm in the nucleon and charm production at large rapidities in collinear, hybrid and $k_T$-factorization approaches
• Prompt neutrinos and intrinsic charm at SHiP
• Mapping the dominant regions of the phase space associated with $c\bar{c}$ production relevant for the Prompt Atmospheric Neutrino Flux
• Parton distribution functions and constraints on the intrinsic charm content of the proton using BHPS approach
• High energy muons in extensive air showers
• $D$-meson production in high energy $pA$ collisions within the QCD color dipole transverse momentum representation
• Kaon production in high multiplicity events at the LHC
• Neutrino events within muon bundles at neutrino telescopes
• The Forward Physics Facility at the High-Luminosity LHC