Intrinsic charm quark valence distribution of the proton

Abstract

We provide a first quantitative indication that the wave function of the proton contains unequal distributions of charm quarks and antiquarks, i.e., a nonvanishing intrinsic valence charm distribution. A significant nonvanishing valence component cannot be perturbatively generated; hence, our results reinforce previous evidence that the proton contains an intrinsic (i.e., not radiatively generated) charm quark component. We establish our result through a determination of the parton distribution functions of charm quarks and antiquarks in the proton. We propose two novel experimental probes of this intrinsic charm valence component: D-meson asymmetries in Z+c-jet production at the LHCb experiment and flavor-tagged structure functions at the Electron-Ion Collider. Published by the American Physical Society 2024