We investigate the impact of displaced heavy quark matching scales in a global fit. The heavy quark matching scale $mu_{m}$ determines at which energy scale $mu$ the QCD theory transitions from $N_{F}$ to $N_{F}+1$ in the Variable Flavor Number Scheme (VFNS) for the evolution of the Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) and strong coupling $alpha_S(mu)$. We study the variation of the matching scales, and their impact on a global PDF fit of the combined HERA data. As the choice of the matching scale $mu_{m}$ effectively is a choice of scheme, this represents a theoretical uncertainty; ideally, we would like to see minimal dependence on this parameter. For the transition across the charm quark (from $N_{F}=3$ to $4$), we find a large $mu_m=mu_{c}$ dependence of the global fit $chi^2$ at NLO, but this is significantly reduced at NNLO. For the transition across the bottom quark (from $N_{F}=4$ to $5$), we have a reduced $mu_{m}=mu_b$ dependence of the $chi^2$ at both NLO and NNLO as compared to the charm. This feature is now implemented in xFitter 2.0.0, an open source QCD fit framework.
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