Measurement of D*+- production in deep inelastic ep scattering at HERA

TL;DR

This paper reports on the measurement of D* meson production in deep inelastic ep scattering at HERA, providing data that helps constrain the gluon distribution in the proton and tests QCD predictions.

Contribution

First measurement of D* production in DIS at HERA that compares data with NLO QCD calculations to improve understanding of proton gluon density.

Findings

Data are well described by NLO QCD models.

Measurement of the charm contribution to the proton structure function.

Sensitivity of the data to the gluon distribution in the proton.

Abstract

Inclusive production of $D^*(2010)$ mesons in deep inelastic scattering has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 81.9 pb$^{-1}$. The decay channel $D^{* +}\to D^0 \pi^+ $ with $D^0\to K^-\pi^+$ and corresponding antiparticle decay were used to identify $D^*$ mesons. Differential $D^*$ cross sections with $1.5<Q^2<1000$ GeV$^2$ and $0.02<y<0.7$ in the kinematic region $1.5<p_T(D^*)<15$ GeV and $|\eta(D^*)|<1.5$ are compared to different QCD calculations incorporating different parameterisations of the parton densities in the proton. The data show sensitivity to the gluon distribution in the proton and are reasonably well described by next-to-leading-order QCD with the ZEUS NLO QCD fit used as the input parton density in the proton. The observed cross section is extrapolated to the full kinematic region in $p_T(D^*)$ and $\eta(D^*)$ in order to determine the open-charm contribution, $F_2^{\rm charm}(x,Q^2)$, to the proton structure function, $F_2$. Since, at low $Q^2$, the uncertainties of the data are comparable to those from the QCD fit, the measured differential cross sections in $y$ and $Q^2$ should be used in future fits to constrain the gluon density.