With the H1 detector at the ep collider HERA, D* meson production cross sections have been measured in deep inelastic scattering with four-momentum transfers Q^2>2 GeV2 and in photoproduction at energies around W(gamma p)~ 88 GeV and 194 GeV. Next-to-Leading Order QCD calculations are found to describe the differential cross sections within theoretical and experimental uncertainties. Using these calculations, the NLO gluon momentum distribution in the proton, x_g g(x_g), has been extracted in the momentum fraction range 7.5x10^{-4}< x_g <4x10^{-2} at average scales mu^2 =25 to 50 GeV2. The gluon momentum fraction x_g has been obtained from the measured kinematics of the scattered electron and the D* meson in the final state. The results compare well with the gluon distribution obtained from the analysis of scaling violations of the proton structure function F_2.
Photoproduction data collected with the H1 detector at HERA in 1994 are used to study the cross-sections for inclusive charged particle production and the structure of the photon. The differential cross-sections dsigma/dpT2, for |eta| < 1 in the HERA laboratory frame, and dsigma/deta for pT > 2 GeV/c and pT > 3 GeV/c have been measured. Model calculations of these cross-sections, based on perturbative QCD, indicate that the results are sensitive to the parton densities of the photon as well as to higher order effects, which are phenomenologically treated by multiple interactions. This sensitivity is exploited to determine the leading order x_gamma distribution of partons in the photon using a new method based on high pT charged particles. The gluon content of the photon is extracted and found to rise with decreasing x_gamma.
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