Probing double parton scattering via associated open charm and bottom production in ultraperipheral $pA$ collisions

In this article, we propose a novel channel for phenomenological studies of the double-parton scattering (DPS) based upon associated production of charm $c\bar{c}$ and bottom $b\bar{b}$ quark pairs in well-separated rapidity intervals in ultra-peripheral high-energy proton-nucleus collisions. This process provides a direct access to the double-gluon distribution in the proton at small-$x$ and enables one to test the factorised DPS pocket formula. We have made the corresponding theoretical predictions for the DPS contribution to this process at typical LHC energies and beyond and we compute the energy-independent (but photon momentum fraction dependent) effective cross section.

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