Inclusive transverse momentum spectra of charged particles in photoproduction events in the laboratory pseudorapidity range $-1.2<\eta<1.4$ have been measured up to $p_{T}=8\GeV $ using the ZEUS detector. Diffractive and non--diffractive reactions have been selected with an average $\gamma p$ centre of mass (c.m.) energy of $\langle W \rangle = 180\GeV$. For diffractive reactions, the $p_{T}$ spectra of the photon dissociation events have been measured in two intervals of the dissociated photon mass with mean values $\langle M_{X} \rangle = 5$ GeV and $10$ GeV. The inclusive transverse momentum spectra fall exponentially in the low $p_{T}$ region. The non--diffractive data show a pronounced high $p_{T}$ tail departing from the exponential shape. The $p_{T}$ distributions are compared to lower energy photoproduction data and to hadron--hadron collisions at a similar c.m. energy. The data are also compared to the results of a next--to--leading order QCD calculation.

The production of $\phi$ mesons in the reaction $e~{+}p \rightarrow e~{+} \phi p$ ($\phi \rightarrow K~{+}K~{-}$), for $7 < Q~2 < 25$ GeV$~2$ and for virtual photon-proton centre of mass energies ($W$) in the range 42-134 GeV, has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA. When compared to lower energy data at similar $Q~2$, the results show that the $\gamma~*p \rightarrow \phid p$ cross section rises strongly with $W$. This behaviour is similar to that previously found for the $\gamma~*p \rightarrow \rho~0 p$ cross section. This strong dependence cannot be explained by production through soft pomeron exchange. It is, however, consistent with perturbative QCD expectations, where it reflects the rise of the gluon momentum density in the proton at small $x$. The ratio of $\sigma (\phi) / \sigma (\rho~0)$, which has previously been determined by ZEUS to be 0.065 $\pm$ 0.013 (stat.) in photoproduction at a mean $W$ of 70 GeV, is measured to be 0.18 $\pm $ 0.05 (stat.) $\pm$ 0.03 (syst.) at a mean $Q~2$ of 12.3 GeV$~2$ and mean $W$ of $\approx$ 100 GeV and is thus approaching at large $Q~2$ the value of 2/9 predicted from the quark charges of the vector mesons and a flavour independent production mechanism.

The reaction $\gamma p \rightarrow \omega p$ $(\omega \rightarrow \pi~+\pi~-\pi~0$ and $\pi~0\rightarrow\gamma\gamma)$ has been studied in $ep$ interactions using the \mbox{ZEUS} detector at photon-proton centre-of-mass energies between $70$ and $90\uni{GeV}$ and $|t| < 0.6\uni{GeV}~2$, where $t$ is the squared four momentum transferred at the proton vertex. The elastic \ome photoproduction cross section has been measured to be $\sigma_{\gamma p\rightarrow \omega p} = 1.21\pm 0.12\pm 0.23 \mu\mbox{b}$. The differential cross section $d\sigma_{\gamma p\rightarrow \omega p} /d|t|$ has an exponential shape $\mbox{e}~{-b |t|}$ with a slope $b = 10.0\pm 1.2\pm 1.3\uni{GeV}~{-2}$. The angular distributions of the decay pions are consistent with {\it s}-channel helicity conservation. When compared to low energy data, the features of $\omega$ photoproduction as measured at HERA energies are in agreement with those of a soft diffractive process. Previous measurements of the $\rho~0$ and $\phi$ photoproduction cross sections at HERA show a similar behaviour.

The differential cross section $d\sigma/dt$ for elastic $\rho~0$ photoproduction, $\gamma p \rightarrow \rho~0 p (\rho~0 \rightarrow \pi~+ \pi~-)$, has been measured in $ep$ interactions at HERA. The squared four-momentum exchanged at the proton vertex, $t$, has been determined directly by measuring the momentum of the scattered proton using the ZEUS Leading Proton Spectrometer (LPS), a large scale system of silicon micro-strip detectors operating close to the HERA proton beam. The LPS allows the measurement of the momentum of high energy protons scattered at small angles with accuracies of 0.4% for the longitudinal momentum and 5 MeV for the transverse momentum. Photoproduction of $\rho~0$ mesons has been investigated in the interval $0.073< |t| <0.40 GeV~2$, for photon virtualities $Q~2<1 GeV~2$ and photon-proton centre-of-mass energies $W$ between 50 and 100 GeV. In the measured range, the $t$ distribution exhibits an exponential shape with a slope parameter $b = 9.8 \pm 0.8 (stat.) \pm 1.1 (syst.) GeV~{-2}$. The use of the LPS eliminates the contamination from events with diffractive dissociation of the proton into low mass states.

A measurement of inclusive charged particle distributions in deep inelastic $ep$ scattering for $\gamma~* p$ centre-of-mass energies $75< W < 175$GeV and momentum transfer squared $10< Q~2 < 160$GeV$~2$ from the ZEUS detector at HERA is presented. The differential charged particle rates in the $\gamma~* p$ centre-of-mass system as a function of the scaled longitudinal momentum, $x_F$, and of the transverse momentum, $p_t~*$ and $<\!\!p_t~{*\,2}\!\!>\,\,$ , as a function of $x_F$, $W$ and $Q~2$ are given. Separate distributions are shown for events with (LRG) and without (NRG) a rapidity gap with respect to the proton direction. The data are compared with results from experiments at lower beam energies, with the naive quark parton model and with parton models including perturbative QCD corrections. The comparison shows the importance of the higher order QCD processes. Significant differences of the inclusive charged particle rates between NRG and LRG events at the same $W$ are observed. The value of $<\!\!p_t~{*\,2}\!\!>\,\,$ for LRG events with a hadronic mass $M_X$, which excludes the forward produced baryonic system, is similar to the $<\!\!p_t~{*\,2}\!\!>\,\,$ value observed in fixed target experiments at $W \approx M_X$.

Elastic $\rho~0$ photoproduction has been measured using the ZEUS detector at HERA. Untagged photoproduction events from $ep$ interactions were used to measure the reaction $\gamma p \rightarrow \rho~0 p$ ($\rho~0 \rightarrow \pi~+ \pi~-$) at photon-proton centre-of-mass energies between 60 and 80GeV and $|t|&lt;0.5$GeV$~2$, where $t$ is the square of the four-momentum transferred at the proton vertex. The differential cross section $d\sigma/dM_{\pi\pi}$, where $M_{\pi\pi}$ is the invariant mass of the two pions, and the integrated cross section, $\sigma_{\gamma p\rightarrow \rho~0 p}$, are presented; the latter was measured to be $14.7\pm 0.4(\mbox{stat.})\pm2.4(\mbox{syst.})\mu\mbox{b}$. The differential cross section $d\sigma/dt$ has an approximately exponential shape; a fit of the type $A~{\prime}_{t} \exp{(-b~{\prime}_{t}|t| + c~{\prime}_{t} t~2)}$ yields a $t$-slope $b~{\prime}_{t}= 9.9\pm1.2(\mbox{stat.})\pm 1.4(\mbox{syst.})\mu\mbox{b}$. The results, when compared to low energy data, show a weak energy dependence of both $\sigma_{\gamma p\rightarrow \rho~0 p}$ and of the $t$-slope. The $\rho~0$ is produced predominantly with transverse polarisation, demonstrating that $s$-channel helicity conservation holds at these energies.

The gluon momentum density xg ( x , Q 2 ) of the proton was extracted at Q 2 = 20 GeV 2 for small values of x between 4 × 10 −4 and 10 −2 from the scaling violations of the proton structure function F 2 measured recently by ZEUS in deep inelastic neutral current ep scattering at HERA. The extraction was performed in two ways. Firstly, using a global NLO fit to the ZEUS data on F 2 at low x constrained by measurementsfrom NMC at larger x ; and secondly using published approximate methods for the solution of the GLAP QCD evolution equations. Consistent results are obtained. A substantial increase of the gluon density is found at small x in comparison with the NMC result obtained at larger values of x .

We have measured the absolute cross sections of the electron-deuteron scattering at q2=3.5 F−2 and obtained the complete inelastic spectrum. Three points for each spectrum are given with a 4% accuracy. The scattering angles, 60° and 130°, were chosen to allow the separation between electric and magnetic scattering. Calculations of radiative corrections were made in order to permit the comparison of the spectra with the inelastic-scattering theories.

Exclusive production of proton-antiproton pairs by two photon scattering at CM energies between 2.0 GeV and 3.1 GeV has been measured with the TASSO detector at the e + e − storage ring PETRA. The angular distribution is flat within the accepted CM angular range | cos Θ ∗ |⩽0.7 . The integrated cross section (| cos Θ ∗ |⩽0.6) drops from about 4 nb at 2 GeV to less than 0.5 nb above 3 GeV. For the two-photon production of the η c (2984) and its subsequent decay into proton-antiproton the upper limit Γ(η c →γγ)· B (η c → p p )<0.32 keV (95% CL) is found.

The weak coupling constants of the electron, gVe and gAe, are determined from measurements of the total and differential cross sections for the reaction νμe→νμe. The data also place limits of interest on the magnitudes of a neutrino charge radius and a possible neutrino magnetic dipole moment.