Measurement of D+- and D0 production in deep inelastic scattering using a lifetime tag at HERA

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of D+- and D0 meson production in deep inelastic scattering at HERA, using lifetime tagging to reduce background, and compares results with QCD predictions to enhance understanding of proton structure.

Contribution

It introduces a novel measurement of D meson production using lifetime tagging at HERA, providing data that tests next-to-leading-order QCD predictions.

Findings

QCD describes the data well

Cross sections are consistent with theoretical models

Provides extrapolated F2^ccbar contribution to proton structure function

Abstract

The production of D+- and D0 mesons has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 133.6 pb-1. The measurements cover the kinematic range 5 < Q^2 < 1000 GeV^2, 0.02 < y < 0.7, 1.5 < p_T^D < 15 GeV and eta^D < 1.6. Combinatorial background to the D meson signals is reduced by using the ZEUS microvertex detector to reconstruct displaced secondary vertices. Production cross sections are compared with the predictions of next-to-leading-order QCD which is found to describe the data well. Measurements are extrapolated to the full kinematic phase space in order to obtain the open-charm contribution, F2^ccbar, to the proton structure function, F2.