Inclusive Production of D^+, D^0, D_s^+ and D^*+ Mesons in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of inclusive D meson production in deep inelastic scattering at HERA, covering various meson states and kinematic ranges, and finds results consistent with universal hadronisation models.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data on D meson production in DIS and supports the universality of the hadronisation process for charm quarks.

Findings

Production cross sections are measured across a broad kinematic range.

Results are compatible with factorisable and universal hadronisation models.

Reconstruction techniques using displaced secondary vertices improve signal identification.

Abstract

Inclusive production cross sections are measured in deep inelastic scattering at HERA for meson states composed of a charm quark and a light antiquark or the charge conjugate. The measurements cover the kinematic region of photon virtuality 2 < Q^2 < 100 GeV^2, inelasticity 0.05 < y < 0.7, D meson transverse momenta p_t(D) > 2.5 GeV and pseudorapidity |eta(D)| < 1.5. The identification of the D-meson decays and the reduction of the combinatorial background profit from the reconstruction of displaced secondary vertices by means of the H1 silicon vertex detector. The production of charmed mesons containing the light quarks u, d and s is found to be compatible with a description in which the hard scattering is followed by a factorisable and universal hadronisation process.