The production of beauty and charm quarks in ep interactions has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA for exchanged four-momentum squared 5 < Q^2 < 1000 GeV^2 using an integrated luminosity of 354 pb^{-1}. The beauty and charm content in events with at least one jet have been extracted using the invariant mass of charged tracks associated with secondary vertices and the decay-length significance of these vertices. Differential cross sections as a function of Q^2, Bjorken x, jet transverse energy and pseudorapidity were measured and compared with next-to-leading-order QCD calculations. The beauty and charm contributions to the proton structure functions were extracted from the double-differential cross section as a function of x and Q^2. The running beauty-quark mass, m_b at the scale m_b, was determined from a QCD fit at next-to-leading order to HERA data for the first time and found to be 4.07 \pm 0.14 (fit} ^{+0.01}_{-0.07} (mod.) ^{+0.05}_{-0.00} (param.) ^{+0.08}_{-0.05} (theo) GeV.
Differential cross sections for inclusive jet production in beauty events as a function of ET(JET) for ET(JET) > 5 GeV. The measurements are given together with their statistical and systematic uncertainties. Hadronisation and QED radiative corrections, CHAD and CRAD, respectively, are also shown.
Differential cross sections for inclusive jet production in charm events as a function of ET(JET) for ET(JET) > 4.2 GeV. The measurements are given together with their statistical and systematic uncertainties. Hadronisation and QED radiative corrections, CHAD and CRAD, respectively, are also shown.
Differential cross sections for inclusive jet production in beauty events as a function of ETARAP(JET) for -1.6 < ETARAP(JET) < 2.2. The measurements are given together with their statistical and systematic uncertainties. Hadronisation and QED radiative corrections, CHAD and CRAD, respectively, are also shown.
The beauty production cross section for deep inelastic scattering events with at least one hard jet in the Breit frame together with a muon has been measured, for photon virtualities Q^2 > 2 GeV^2, with the ZEUS detector at HERA using integrated luminosity of 72 pb^-1. The total visible cross section is sigma_b-bbar (ep -> e jet mu X) = 40.9 +- 5.7 (stat.) +6.0 -4.4 (syst.) pb. The next-to-leading order QCD prediction lies about 2.5 standard deviations below the data. The differential cross sections are in general consistent with the NLO QCD predictions: however at low values of Q^2, Bjorken x, and muon transverse momentum, and high values of jet transverse energy and muon pseudorapidity, the prediction is about two standard deviations below the data.
Total visible cross section in the specified kinematic region.
Differential cross section w.r.t. Q**2.
Differential cross section w.r.t. log10(x).
The production and semi-leptonic decay of heavy quarks have been studied in the photoproduction process $e^+p -> e^+ + {dijet} + e^- + X with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 38.5 ${\rm pb^{-1}}$. Events with photon-proton centre-of-mass energies, $W_{\gamma p}$, between 134 and 269 GeV and a photon virtuality, Q^2, less than 1 ${\rm GeV^2}$ were selected requiring at least two jets of transverse energy $E_T^{\rm jet1(2)} >7(6)$ GeV and an electron in the final state. The electrons were identified by employing the ionisation energy loss measurement. The contribution of beauty quarks was determined using the transverse momentum of the electron relative to the axis of the closest jet, $p_T^{\rm rel}$. The data, after background subtraction, were fit with a Monte Carlo simulation including beauty and charm decays. The measured beauty cross section was extrapolated to the parton level with the b quark restricted to the region of transverse momentum $p_T^{b} > p_T^{\rm min} =$ 5 GeV and pseudorapidity $|\eta^{b}| <$ 2. The extrapolated cross section is $1.6 \pm 0.4 (stat.)^{+0.3}_{-0.5} (syst.) ^{+0.2}_{-0.4} (ext.) {nb}$. The result is compared to a perturbative QCD calculation performed to next-to-leading order.
The differential distribution of PT(C=REL) for heavy quark decays. The second DSYS error is due to the energy scale uncertainty.
The differential distribution of X(C=GAMMA,OBS), the fraction of the photons momentum contributing to the production of the two highest transverse energy jets. The second DSYS error is due to the energy scale uncertainty.
Cross section for beauty production with a prompt electron in the restricted kinetic region.