HERA Anomaly and Hard Charm in the Nucleon

Abstract

We explore the possibility that the excess neutral and charged current events seen by the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations at HERA at large x and Q^2 could arise from a hard charm component of the nucleon. While the symmetric intrinsic charm hypothesis is unable to account for the HERA anomaly, a non-symmetric charm distribution generated non-perturbatively, for which c-bar is much harder than c, can produce significant enhancement of cross sections at the HERA kinematics.

Comments: extra figure included, version to appear in Phys. Lett. B