Direct Photon and Heavy Quark Jet Production at the LHC

The associated production of direct photons and heavy quarks at the LHC is presented. Predictions for the nuclear modification factor to the cross-section at ALICE are shown. It is demonstrated that this process is a great probe of the gluon and heavy quark nuclear PDFs, as over 80 % of its nPDF dependence at NLO comes from those nPDFs. Therefore measurements of this process will provide an excellent constraint on the gluon nPDF, and will distinguish between different nPDF sets currently out on the market.Comment: Proceedings for ICHEP 201

Constraining the Intrinsic Heavy Quark PDF via Direct Photon Production in Association with a Heavy Quark Jet

We investigate a possible use of direct photon production in association with a heavy quark to test different models of intrinsic heavy quark parton distribution function (PDF) at the Tevatron, at the large hadron collider (LHC) and at RHIC.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in proceedings of DIS201

Heavy quark & direct photon production and heavy quark parton densities

Direct photon production in association with a heavy quark can serve as an excellent tool for the study of the heavy quark distributions. Currently it is believed that heavy quarks are produced radiatively inside the nucleon, and so there is no need to take into account heavy quark parameters inside global PDF analyses. Certain models taking into account the possibility of an intrinsic charm component exist. Here we present how these affect the \gamma + c cross section. While at pA collisions the potential of this process to constrain the gluon nuclear PDF which is currently largely unconstrained is presented.Comment: Quarkonium 2010 Proceeding

Prompt photon in association with a heavy-quark jet in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC

We present a phenomenological study of the associated production of a prompt photon and a heavy quark jet (charm or bottom) in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC. This channel allows for estimating the amount of energy loss experienced by the charm and bottom quarks propagating in the dense QCD medium produced in those collisions. Calculations are carried out at next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy using the BDMPS-Z heavy-quark quenching weights. The quenching of the single heavy-quark jet spectrum reflects fairly the hierarchy in the heavy quark energy loss assumed in the perturbative calculation. On the contrary, the single photon spectrum in heavy-ion collisions is only modified at low momenta, for which less heavy-quark jets pass the kinematic cuts. On top of single particle spectra, the two-particle final state provides a range of observables (photon-jet pair momentum, jet asymmetry, among others) which are studied in detail. The comparison of the photon-jet pair momentum, from p-p to Pb-Pb collisions, is sensitive to the amount of energy lost by the heavy-quarks and could therefore be used in order to better understand parton energy loss processes in the heavy quark sector.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figures, gzipped tar file. Minor changes, 2 references added. Version published in JHE

CTEQ nuclear parton distribution functions

We show for the first time preliminary results of nuclear parton distribution function analysis of charged lepton DIS and Drell-Yan data within the CTEQ framework including error PDFs. We compare our error estimates to estimates of different nPDF groups.Comment: 5 pages, to appear in the proceedings of XXI International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects, Marseilles, Franc

Heavy Quark Production in the ACOT Scheme Beyond NLO

We analyze the properties of the ACOT scheme for heavy quark production and make use of the MS-Bar massless results at NNLO and N3LO for the structure functions F2 and FL in neutral current deep-inelastic scattering to estimate the higher order corrections. The dominant heavy quark mass effects at higher orders can be taken into account using the massless Wilson coefficients together with an appropriate slow-rescaling prescription implementing the phase space constraints. Combining the exact ACOT scheme at NLO with these expressions should provide a good approximation to the full calculation in the ACOT scheme at NNLO and N3LO.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Presented at DIS12, March 2012, Bonn, German

A Hybrid Scheme for Heavy Flavors: Merging the FFNS and VFNS

We introduce a Hybrid Variable Flavor Number Scheme for heavy flavors, denoted H-VFNS, which incorporates the advantages of both the traditional Variable Flavor Number Scheme (VFNS) as well as the Fixed Flavor Number Scheme (FFNS). By including an explicit $N_F$-dependence in both the Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) and the strong coupling constant $\alpha_S$, we generate coexisting sets of PDFs and $\alpha_S$ for $N_F=\{3,4,5,6\}$ at any scale $\mu$, that are related analytically by the $\overline{\text{MS}}$ matching conditions. The H-VFNS resums the heavy quark contributions and provides the freedom to choose the optimal $N_F$ for each particular data set. Thus, we can fit selected HERA data in a FFNS framework, while retaining the benefits of the VFNS to analyze LHC data at high scales. We illustrate how such a fit can be implemented for the case of both HERA and LHC data.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, updated to match journa

Nuclear corrections in neutrino-nucleus DIS and their compatibility with global NPDF analyses

We perform a global chi^2-analysis of nuclear parton distribution functions using data from charged current neutrino-nucleus deep-inelastic scattering (DIS), charged-lepton-nucleus DIS, and the Drell-Yan (DY) process. We show that the nuclear corrections in nu-A DIS are not compatible with the predictions derived from l^+A DIS and DY data. We quantify this result using a hypothesis-testing criterion based on the chi^2 distribution which we apply to the total chi^2 as well as to the chi^2 of the individual data sets. We find that it is not possible to accommodate the data from nu-A and l^+A DIS by an acceptable combined fit. Our result has strong implications for the extraction of both nuclear and proton parton distribution functions using combined neutrino and charged-lepton data sets.Comment: 5 page