Deep-inelastic production of heavy quarks

Abstract

Deep-inelastic production of heavy quarks at HERA, especially charm, is an excellent signal to measure the gluon distribution in the proton at small $x$ values. By measuring various differential distributions of the heavy quarks this reaction permits additional more incisive QCD analyses due to the many scales present. Furthermore, the relatively small mass of the charm quark, compared to the typical momentum transfer $Q$, allows one to study whether and when to treat this quark as a parton. This reaction therefore sheds light on some of the most fundamental aspects of perturbative QCD. We discuss the above issues and review the feasibility of their experimental investigation in the light of a large integrated luminosity.