Proton Structure Functions at Next-to-Leading Order in the Dipole Picture with Massive Quarks

We predict heavy quark production cross sections in deep inelastic scattering at high energy by applying the color glass condensate effective theory. We demonstrate that, when the calculation is performed consistently at next-to-leading order accuracy with massive quarks, it becomes possible, for the first time in the dipole picture with perturbatively calculated center-of-mass energy evolution, to simultaneously describe both the light and heavy quark production data at small xBj. Furthermore, we show how the heavy quark cross section data provides additional strong constraints on the extracted nonperturbative initial condition for the small-xBj evolution equations.

Automated summary

We predict heavy quark production cross sections in deep inelastic scattering at high energy using the color glass condensate effective theory. By performing calculations consistently at next-to-leading order accuracy with massive quarks, we are able to describe both light and heavy quark production data at small xBj for the first time in the dipole picture with perturbatively calculated center-of-mass energy evolution. Additionally, the heavy quark cross section data provides strong constraints on the nonperturbative initial condition for the small-xBj evolution equations.