The production of the doubly charmed baryon in deeply inelastic $ep$ scattering at the Large Hadron Electron Collider

Abstract

In this paper, we carry out a detailed study on the production of the doubly charmed baryon in deeply inelastic $ep$ scattering (DIS) for $Q^2\in [2,100]{\text{GeV}}^2$, at the Large Hadron Electron Collider (LHeC) with $E_e=60(140)$ GeV and $E_p=7000$ GeV. To exclude the contributions from the diffractive productions and the $b$ hadron decays, we impose the kinematic cuts $0.3<z<0.9$, and $p_{t,\text{baryon}}^{\star 2}>1{\text{GeV}}^2$ in the center-of-mass (CM) frame of ${\gamma }^{\ast }p$. Based on the designed LHeC luminosity, by detecting the decay channel ${\Xi }_{cc}^{+}({\Xi }_{cc}^{++})\to {\Lambda }_c^{+}$ with the subsequent decay ${\Lambda }_c^{+}\to p{K}^{-}{\pi }^{+}$, we predict that about 1880 (2700) ${\Xi }_{cc}^{+}$ events and 3750 (5400) ${\Xi }_{cc}^{++}$ events can be accumulated per year, which signifies the prospect of observing them via the DIS at the forthcoming LHeC. In addition, we also predict the distributions of a rich variety of physical observables in the laboratory frame and the ${\gamma }^{\ast }p$ CM frame, including $Q^2$, $p_t^2$, $Y$(rapidity), $p_t^{\star 2}$, $Y^{\star }$, $W$, and $z$ distributions, respectively, which can provide helpful references for studying the doubly charmed baryon. In conclusion, we think that in addition to the LHC, the LHeC is also a helpful platform for studying the properties of the doubly charmed baryon.

Comments: 22 pages, 5 figures, and 1 table; accepted for publication in JHEP