$D$ - meson production at very forward rapidities: estimating the intrinsic charm contribution

Understand

We study $D$ - meson production at forward rapidities taking into account the non - linear effects in the QCD dynamics and the intrinsic charm component of the proton wave function.

• The total cross section, the rapidity distributions and the Feynman - $x$ distributions are calculated for $p p$ collisions at different center of mass energies.
• Our results show that, at the LHC, the intrinsic charm component changes the $D$ rapidity distributions in a region which is beyond the coverage of the LHCb detectors.
• At higher energies the IC component dominates the $y$ and $x_F$ distributions exactly in the range where the produced $D$ mesons decay and contribute the most to the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux measured by the ICECUBE Collaboration.