Probing intrinsic charm quarks in the proton

We investigate the feasibility to use deep inelastic scattering at HERA to probe a possible intrinsic charm quark component in the proton. Cross-sections are found to be sizeable, but significantly reduced due to acceptance problems related to the strongly forward boosted cp system in the HERA lab frame. Backgrounds are calculated and ways to suppress them are developed, resulting in acceptable signal/background ratios using muons to tag charm. The resulting statistics is small, but seems enough to add new information or perhaps solve the open intrinsic charm problem. (orig.)