D production in deep inelastic scattering at HERA

• Published in: Physics letters. B 1997-09, Vol.407 (3-4), p.402-418
• Main Authors: Breitweg, J., Derrick, M., Krakauer, D., Magill, S., Mikunas, D., Musgrave, B., Repond, J., Stanek, R., Talaga, R.L., Yoshida, R., Zhang, H., Mattingly, M.C.K., Anselmo, F., Antonioli, P., Bari, G., Basile, M., Bellagamba, L., Boscherini, D., Bruni, A., Bruni, G., Cara Romeo, G., Castellini, G., Cifarelli, L., Cindolo, F., Contin, A., Corradi, M., De Pasquale, S., Gialas, I., Giusti, P., Iacobucci, G., Laurenti, G., Levi, G., Margotti, A., Massam, T., Nania, R., Palmonari, F., Pesci, A., Polini, A., Sartorelli, G., Zamora Garcia, Y., Zichichi, A., Amelung, C., Bornheim, A., Brock, I., Coböken, K., Crittenden, J., Deffner, R., Eckert, M., Feld, L., Grothe, M., Hartmann, H., Heinloth, K., Heinz, L., Hilger, E., Jakob, H.-P., Katz, U.F., Paul, E., Pfeiffer, M., Rembser, Ch, Stamm, J., Wedemeyer, R., Bailey, D.S., Campbell-Robson, S., Cottingham, W.N., Foster, B., Hall-Wilton, R., Hayes, M.E., Heath, G.P., Heath, H.F., Piccioni, D., Roff, D.G., Tapper, R.J., Arneodo, M., Ayad, R., Capua, M., Garfagnini, A., Iannotti, L., Schioppa, M., Susinno, G., Kim, J.Y., Lee, J.H., Lim, I.T., Pac, M.Y., Caldwell, A., Cartiglia, N., Jing, Z., Liu, W., Parsons, J.A., Ritz, S., Sampson, S., Sciulli, F., Straub, P.B., Zhu, Q., Borzemski, P., Chwastowski, J., Eskreys, A., Jakubowski, Z., Przybycień, M.B., Zachara, M., Zawiejski, L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; CROSS SECTIONS; DECAY; DEEP INELASTIC SCATTERING; DIFFERENTIAL CROSS SECTIONS; EXTRAPOLATION; PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS; POSITRONS; PRODUCTION; PROTONS; QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS; STRUCTURE FUNCTIONS
• ISSN: 0370-2693; 1873-2445
• DOI: 10.1016/S0370-2693(97)00847-2

This paper presents measurements of D{sup *{+-}} production in deep inelastic scattering from collisions between 27.5 GeV positrons and 820 GeV protons. The data have been taken with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The decay channel D{sup *+} {yields} (D{sup 0} {yields} K{sup -}{pi}{sup +}){pi}{sup +} (+c.c) has been used in the study. The e{sup +}p cross section for inclusive D{sup *{+-}} production with 5 and y < 0.7 is 5.3 {+-} 1.0 {+-} 0.8 nb in the kinematic region 1.3 < p{sub T}(D{sup *{+-}}) < 9.0 GeV and |{eta}(D{sup *{+-}})| < 1.5. Differential cross sections as functions of p{sub T}(D{sup *{+-}}), {eta}(D{sup *{+-}}), W and Q{sup 2} are compared with next-to-leading order QCD calculations based on the photon-gluon fusion production mechanism. After an extrapolation of the cross section to the full kinematic region in p{sub T}(D{sup *{+-}}) and {eta}(D{sup *{+-}}), the charm contribution F{sub 2}{sup c}{bar c}(x, Q{sup 2}) to the proton structure function is determined for Bjorken x between 2 x 10{sup -4} and 5 x 10{sup -3}.