English

Geometric Scaling in Inclusive Charm Production

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2011-01-25 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We show that the cross section for inclusive charm production exhibits geometric scaling in a large range of photon virtualities. In the HERA kinematic domain the saturation momentum Qsat2(x)Q_{sat}^2(x) stays below the hard scale μc2=4mc2\mu_c^2=4m_c^2, implying charm production probing mostly the color transparency regime and unitarization effects being almost negligible. We derive our results considering two saturation models which are able to describe the DESY ep collider HERA data for the proton structure function at small values of the Bjorken variable xx. A striking feature is the scaling on τ=Q22/Qsat2(x)\tau=Q_2^2/Q_{sat}^2(x) above saturation limit, corroborating recent theoretical studies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0307090,
  title  = {Geometric Scaling in Inclusive Charm Production},
  author = {V. P. Goncalves and M. V. T. Machado},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0307090},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

4 pages, 2 figures. Version to be published in Physical Review Letters