Charm content of the proton: An analytic calculation

Abstract

According to general understanding, the proton as one of the main ingredients of the nucleus is composed of one down and two up quarks bound together by gluons, described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). In this view, heavy quarks do not contribute to the primary wave function of the proton. Heavy quarks arise in the proton perturbatively by gluon splitting and the probability gradually increases as $Q^2$ increases (extrinsic heavy quarks). In addition, the existence of non-perturbative intrinsic charm quarks in the proton has also been predicted by QCD. In this picture, the heavy quarks also exist in the proton's wave function. In fact, the wave function has a five-quark structure $ \vert u u d c \bar{c}\rangle $ in addition to the three-quark bound state $ \vert u u d\rangle $. So far, many studies have been done to confirm or reject this additional component. One of the recent studies has been done by the NNPDF collaboration. They established the existence of an intrinsic charm component at the 3-standard-deviation level in the proton from the structure function measurements. Most of the studies performed to calculate the contribution of the intrinsic charm so far have been based on the global analyses of the experimental data. In this article, for the first time we directly calculate this contribution by an analytic method. We estimate a $x^{c\bar{c}} = (1.36 \pm 0.67)\% $ contribution for the $ \vert u u d c \bar{c}\rangle $ component of the proton.