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.
Inclusive D+- electroproduction cross section.
Inclusive D0 electroproduction cross section.
Inclusive D/S+- electroproduction cross section.
First results on inclusive D0 and D* production in deep inelastic $ep$ scattering are reported using data collected by the H1 experiment at HERA in 1994. Differential cross sections are presented for both channels and are found to agree well with QCD predictions based on the boson gluon fusion process. A charm production cross section for 10GeV$~2\le Q~2\le100$GeV$~2$ and $0.01\le y\le0.7$ of $\sigma\left(ep\rightarrow c\overlinecX\right) = (17.4 \pm 1.6 \pm 1.7 \pm 1.4)$nb is derived. A first measurement of the charm contribution F2_charm(x,Q~2) to the proton structure function for Bjorken $x$ between $8\cdot10~{-4}$ and $8\cdot10~{-3}$ is presented. In this kinematic range a ratio F2_charm/F2= 0.237\pm0.021{+0.043\atop-0.039}$ is observed.
Inclusive D meson production cross sections. The second systematc error represents the model uncertainty.
Inclusive charm meson cross section averaged for the two processes. The second systematc error represents the model uncertainty.
Ratio of cross sections of D0 and D* production.