Fully charmed tetraquark production in forward rapidity p p collisions at LHC and FCC energies

In this paper, we investigate the production of a fully charmed tetraquark state T 4 c in p p collisions at forward rapidities through the fragmentation mechanism considering the color glass condensate formalism and the solution of the running coupling Balitsky-Kovchegov equation. The contributions of gluon- and charm-initiated processes are taken into account, and the impact of an intrinsic charm component in the proton’s wave function is estimated. Predictions for the transverse momentum distribution of the T 4 c state are presented assuming different rapidities, distinct quantum numbers of the state and center-of-mass energies. Our results indicate that the higher cross section is associated with the production of a tensor state T 4 c ( 2 + + ) , which is dominated by the gluon-initiated process. In contrast, the production of the axial-vector state T 4 c ( 1 + − ) is dominated by the charm-initiated process and is very sensitive to the presence (or not) of an intrinsic charm.