Diffractive production of D*+-(2010) mesons in deep inelastic scattering has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 44.3 pb-1. Diffractive charm production is identified by the presence of a large rapidity gap in the final state of events in which a D*+-(2010) meson is reconstructed in the decay channel D*+ -> (D0 -> K-pi+) pi+ (+ charge conjugate). Differential cross sections when compared with theoretical predictions indicate the importance of gluons in such diffractive interactions.
Measurment of total diffractive cross section and ratio to inclusive DIS cross section.
Ratio of diffractive to inclusive D*+- production w.r.t. Q**2.
Ratio of diffractive to inclusive D*+- production w.r.t. W.
The production of D*+-(2010) mesons in deep inelastic scattering has been measured in the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 37 pb^-1. The decay channels D*+ -> D0 pi+(+c.c.), with D0 -> K- pi+ or D0 ->K- pi- pi+ pi+, have been used to identify the D mesons. The e+p cross section for inclusive D*+- production with 1<Q^2<600 GeV^2 and 0.02<y<0.7 is 8.31 +- 0.31(stat.) +0.30-0.50(syst.) nb in the kinematic region 1.5< pT(D*+-)<15 GeV and |eta(D*+-)|<1.5. Differential cross sections are consistent with a next-to-leading-order perturbative-QCD calculation when using charm-fragmentation models which take into account the interaction of the charm quark with the proton remnant. The observed cross section is extrapolated to the full kinematic region in pT(D*+-) and eta(D*+-) in order to determine the charm contribution, F^ccbar_2(x,Q^2), to the proton structure function. The ratio F^ccbar_2/F_2 rises from ~10% at Q^2 ~1.8 GeV^2 to ~30% at Q^2 ~130 GeV^2 for x values in the range 10^-4 to 10-3.
The measured cross section for D* production. The first is derived from theK2PI final state and the second from the K4PI final state.
The differential cross section w.r.t. Q**2 from the K2PI final state. The asymmetric errors are the quadratic sum of the statistical and systematic errors. The statistical errors are also shown separately.
The differential cross section w.r.t. X from the K2PI final state. The asymmetric errors are the quadratic sum of the statistical and systematic errors. The statistical errors are also shown separately.