Exploring the Lepton Content of Protons: New Testing Methods at HERA and EIC

Recent research has focused on the lepton content of protons, which, despite being baryons with an overall vanishing lepton number, exhibit a non-trivial leptonic content due to quantum fluctuations. This phenomenon is described through lepton parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the proton. A new paper titled "Testing the lepton content of the proton at HERA and EIC" by Leandro Da Rold, Anibal D. Medina, Subhojit Roy, and Carlos E.M. Wagner proposes a method to test these lepton PDFs by analyzing specific production processes at proton-electron colliders such as HERA and the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider (EIC).

The authors suggest examining both non-resonant di-lepton and resonant Z gauge boson production processes induced by leptons within the proton. Although the lepton PDFs are known to be small, the study indicates that these processes could yield measurable event rates at HERA and EIC, providing a means to validate the computed lepton PDFs. This research is significant as it enhances our understanding of the internal structure of protons and could lead to new insights in high-energy physics, particularly in the context of future collider experiments.

The findings from this study may have broader implications for particle physics, as they could influence how physicists interpret data from high-energy collisions and refine theoretical models of particle interactions. The paper can be accessed for further details at arXiv:2408.12644.