The Physics of Heavy Quark Distributions in Hadrons: Collider Tests

Abstract

We present a review of the current understanding of the heavy quark distributions in the nucleon and their impact on collider physics. The origin of strange, charm and bottom quark pairs at high light-front (LF) momentum fractions in hadron wave functions---the "intrinsic" quarks, is reviewed. The determination of heavy-quark parton distribution functions (PDFs) is particularly significant for the analysis of hard processes at LHC energies. We show that a careful study of the inclusive production of open charm and the production of $\gamma$/$Z$/$W$ particles, accompanied by the heavy jets at large transverse momenta can give essential information on the intrinsic heavy quark (IQ) distributions. We also focus on the theoretical predictions concerning other observables which are very sensitive to the intrinsic charm contribution to PDFs including Higgs production at high xf and novel fixed target measurements which can be tested at the LHC.