Probing the pion-gluon distribution at small <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mi>x</mml:mi> </mml:math> in photon-induced interactions at the LHC

In this paper, we propose the analysis of the heavy quark photoproduction associated with a leading neutron in hadronic collisions at the LHC as an alternative to probe the pion gluon distribution in a kinematical range not covered by previous experiments. We perform an exploratory study of the charm and bottom photoproduction associated with a leading neutron in proton-proton ( <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <a:mi>p</a:mi> <a:mi>p</a:mi> </a:math> ) and proton-lead ( <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <c:mi>p</c:mi> <c:mi>P</c:mi> <c:mi>b</c:mi> </c:math> ) collisions, and present calculations for the rapidity distributions and cross sections. Our predictions indicate that experimental studies of these processes are feasible, and that a future measurement of this final state will be useful to constrain the pion gluon distribution at small values of the Bjorken <e:math xmlns:e="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <e:mi>x</e:mi> </e:math> variable and to improve our understanding of the pion structure.