Measurement of the charm structure function F2(c)(gamma) of the photon at LEP

Collaboration
May, 2002
19 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Lett.B 539 (2002) 13-24
e-Print:
Report number:
  • CERN-EP-2002-031
Experiments:

Citations per year

20022006201020142017012345
Abstract: (Elsevier)
The production of charm quarks is studied in deep-inelastic electron–photon scattering using data recorded by the OPAL detector at LEP at nominal e + e − centre-of-mass energies from 183 to 209 GeV. The charm quarks have been identified by full reconstruction of charged D ★ mesons using their decays into D 0 π with the D 0 observed in two decay modes with charged particle final states, K π and K πππ . The cross-section σ D ★ for production of charged D ★ in the reaction e + e − →e + e − D ★ X is measured in a restricted kinematical region using two bins in Bjorken x , 0.0014< x <0.1 and 0.1< x <0.87. From σ D ★ the charm production cross-section σ( e + e − → e + e − c c ̄ X) and the charm structure function of the photon F 2,c γ are determined in the region 0.0014< x <0.87 and 5< Q 2 <100 GeV 2 . For x >0.1 the perturbative QCD calculation at next-to-leading order agrees perfectly with the measured cross-section. For x <0.1 the measured cross-section is 43.8±14.3±6.3±2.8 pb with a next-to-leading order prediction of 17.0 +2.9 −2.3  pb.
Note:
  • 18 pages, 4 figures
  • electron positron: colliding beams
  • photon electron: deep inelastic scattering
  • quark: charm
  • quark: pair production
  • photon: structure function
  • structure function: charm
  • D*(2010): photoproduction
  • D*(2010): hadronic decay
  • D0: hadronic decay
  • quantum chromodynamics: perturbation theory