Speaker
Description
We study the production of c and b quarks in photon-induced processes as a probe of gluon saturation, with a focus on the high-energy region accessible in ultra-peripheral collisions at the LHC. We compare predictions for inclusive and diffractive heavy quark production with and without saturation effects by using the nonlinear Balitsky-Kovchegov and the linear Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov equations for the evolution of the dipole amplitude. First, the theoretical predictions are shown to be consistent with previous measurements at HERA. Then we present our results for the LHC, which predict a significant difference between the model with saturation and the model without saturation in diffractive charm quark production with Pb targets. Furthermore, the percentage of diffractive charm quark production events is predicted to be approximately twice as large as predictions based on parton distribution functions and shadowing.