Heavy quark photoproduction in $pp$ coherent interactions at LHC

Abstract

In this work we analyse the possibility of constraining the QCD dynamics at high energies studying the heavy quark photoproduction at LHC in coherent interactions. The rapidity distribution and total cross section for charm and bottom production are estimated using three different phenomenological saturation models which successfully describe the HERA data. Our results indicate that the experimental study of the inclusive heavy quark photoproduction can be very useful to discriminate between the classical and quantum versions of the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) formalism.