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.
The inclusive production of D^{*+-}(2010) mesons in deep-inelastic scattering is studied with the H1 detector at HERA. In the kinematic region 1<Q^2<100 GeV^2 and 0.05<y<0.7 an e^+p cross section for inclusive D^(*+-) meson production of 8.50+- 0.42 (stat.)^(+1.21)_(-1.00) (syst.) nb is measured in the visible range p_(tD^*)>1.5 GeV and |\eta_(D^*)|<1.5. Single and double differential inclusive D^(*+-) meson cross sections are compared to perturbative QCD calculations in two different evolution schemes. The charm contribution to the proton structure, F_2^c(x,Q^2), is determined by extrapolating the visible charm cross section to the full phase space. This contribution is found to rise from about 10% at Q^2 = 1.5 GeV^2 to more than 25% at Q^2 = 60 GeV^2 corresponding to x values ranging from 5*10^(-5) to 3*10^(-3)$.
The inclusive cross section for D*+- production. The second DSYS error is related to the changes in efficiency obtained by using different Monte Carlo generators and varying the model parameters.
Single differential visible cross section as a function of W.
Single differential visible cross section as a function of PT.