Heavy flavour production at the LHC: Theoretical aspects

A proper inclusion of heavy quark mass effects in Parton Distribution Function fits has proved crucial. We present a review these effects in DIS and their impact on global analyses and lay out all elements of a properly defined general mass variable flavor number scheme (GM VFNS) that are shared by all modern formulations of the problem. We also report about progress in a number of theoretical problems related to exclusive measurements of heavy flavors. These topics include fragmentation functions for charmed mesons including finite mass effects, fragmentation functions including non-perturbative corrections based on an effective QCD coupling, a discussion of the status of higherorder calculations for top quark production and for polarized structure functions, heavy quark and quarkonium production in the Regge limit, double heavy baryon production, tests of time reversal and CP symmetry in ∧_b decays, as well as a study of the general properties of massive exotic hadrons that will be relevant for an understanding of their detection at the LHC.