2008/05/31 by V. P. Gonçalves, V. P. Goncalves, F. S. Navarra +1
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ex #hep-ph #nucl-ex #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2010.04.004
published as Nucl.Phys.A842:59-71,2010 · 22 pages, 5 figures. Version to be published in Nuclear Physics A
arxiv created 2010/04/07 · openalex publication_date 2010/04/22 · arxiv updated 2011/03/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The complete understanding of the basic constituents of hadrons and the hadronic dynamics at high energies are two of the main challenges for the theory of strong interactions. In particular, the existence of intrinsic heavy quark components in the hadron wave function must be confirmed (or disproved). In this paper we propose a new mechanism for the production of D-mesons at forward rapidities based on the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) formalism and demonstrate that the resulting transverse momentum spectra are strongly dependent on the behavior of the charm distribution at large Bjorken x. Our results show clearly that the hypothesis of intrinsic charm can be tested in pp and p(d) A collisions at RHIC and LHC.