Proton structure from hard p-p processes at high energies

Up to now, the existence of intrinsic (or valence-like) heavy quark components of the proton distribution function has not yet been confirmed or rejected. We show that this hypothesis can be verified at experiments on the inclusive production of the open strangeness (NA61) and at measurements of prompt photons or vector bosons accompanied by heavy flavour jets performed at LHC, CERN. Our theoretical study demonstrates that investigations of the intrinsic heavy quark contributions look very promising in hard processes like $pprightarrow K^pm+X$ and $pprightarrowgamma/Z/W +c(b)+X$. A possible observation of these components at the CBM, NICA experiments is discussed also.

Nucleon structure and hard p-p processes at high energies

The production of heavy flavour hadrons in $pp$ collisions at large values of their transverse momenta can be a new unique source for estimation of intrinsic heavy quark contribution to the proton. We analyze the inclusive production of the open strangeness and the semi-inclusive hard processes of the photon and vector boson production accompanied by the $c$- or $b$-jets in $pp$ collisions. We show that one should select the parton-level (sub)processes (and final-state signatures) that are the most sensitive to the intrinsic heavy quark contributions. We present some predictions for these processes made within the perturbative QCD including the intrinsic strangeness and intrinsic charm in the proton that can be verified in the NA61 experiment and at LHC.