Measurement of D^\pm production in deep inelastic ep scattering with the ZEUS detector at HERA

Abstract

Charm production in deep inelastic ep scattering was measured with the ZEUS detector using an integrated luminosity of 354 pb−1. Charm quarks were identified by reconstructing D± mesons in the D± ! K∓ ± ± decay channel. Lifetime information was used to reduce combinatorial background substantially. Differential cross sections were measured in the kinematic region 5 <Q2 <1000GeV2, 0.02 <y <0.7, 1.5 <pT (D±) <15GeV and | (D±)| <1.6, where Q2 is the photon virtuality, y is the inelasticity, and pT (D±) and (D±) are the transverse momentum and the pseudorapidity of the D± meson, respectively. Next-to-leading-order QCD predictions are compared to the data. The charm contribution, Fc¯c 2 , to the proton structure-function F2 was extracted.