# Charm Photoproduction in ep Collisions at HERA

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Heavy quark photoproduction can be used to probe pQCD calculations with a hard scale given by the heavy quark mass and the high transverse momentum of the produced parton ($`m_Q\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$). Two types of NLO calculations with different approaches are available for comparison with measurements of charm photoproduction at HERA. The massive charm approach  assumes light quarks to be the only active flavours within the structure functions of the proton and the photon, while the massless charm approach  also treats charm as an active flavour and is thus only valid for $`p_{}m_c`$.

The data taken by the ZEUS collaboration during 1996/1997 corresponds to an integrated luminosity of about $`37\text{pb}^1`$. In a subsample of about $`17\text{pb}^1`$ a small calorimeter positioned along the beam pipe was used to tag low $`W`$ events, $`80`$$`<W_{\gamma p}<120`$ GeV. The results of the high $`W`$ region ($`130`$$`<W_{\gamma p}<280`$ GeV) have been published before  and will not be shown here. This is the first presentation of our low $`W`$ results. Charm was identified by the observation of $`D^{}`$(2010) mesons, which were reconstructed in the following decay modes: $`D^+D^0\pi _s^+(K^{}\pi ^+)\pi _s^+`$ $`(Br=0.0262\pm 0.0010)`$ and $`D^+D^0\pi _s^+(K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+\pi ^{})\pi _s^+`$ $`(Br=0.051\pm 0.003)`$ and charge conjugates. The kinematic range studied was $`p_{}^D^{}>2`$ GeV and $`1.5<\eta ^D^{}<1.5`$ for the high $`W`$ region, and $`2<p_{}^D^{}<8`$ GeV and $`1.0<\eta ^D^{}<1.5`$ for the low $`W`$ region. The pseudorapidity is $`\eta ^D^{}=\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{tan}\frac{\theta }{2})`$, where $`\theta `$ is the polar angle with respect to the proton beam direction.

Charged tracks were measured in the central tracking detector. Cross sections were calculated in the photoproduction range of photon virtualities $`Q^2<1\text{GeV}^2`$ ( $`Q^2<0.015\text{GeV}^2`$ for the tagged data).

## 2  $`D^{}`$ RECONSTRUCTION

$`D^{}`$ events have been selected by means of the mass difference ($`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$) method . In the high $`W`$ region we have observed  $`3702\pm 136`$ $`D^{}`$’s in the $`D^0(K\pi )`$ decay mode with $`p_{}^D^{}>2`$GeV, and $`1397\pm 108`$ in the $`(K\pi \pi \pi )`$ decay mode with $`p_{}^D^{}>4`$GeV ($`M(D^0)=1.80`$$`1.92`$GeV). In the low $`W`$ region we triggered only the $`(K\pi )`$ decay mode, and observed $`550\pm 36`$ $`D^{}`$ events in the range $`2<p_{}^D^{}<8`$ GeV (Fig. 1). All tracks were assumed to be pions and kaons in turn; wrong charge $`D^{}`$ combinations  were used as a background distribution (dashed curve in Fig. 1), normalized outside the signal region.

## 3 $`D^{}`$ CROSS SECTIONS AND COMPARISON WITH CALCULATIONS

The $`D^{}`$ differential cross sections in the low $`W`$ region are shown in Fig. 2 to 5. For comparing the experimental data to the NLO QCD calculations, we have used the $`D^{}`$ branching value measured by OPAL  $`f(cD^++\mathrm{})=0.222\pm 0.014\pm 0.014`$. For the charm fragmentation to $`D^{}`$ the Peterson  fragmentation function was used:

$$D_c(z)=N\frac{z(1z)^2}{[(1z)^2+ϵz]^2},z=\frac{p_D^{}}{p_c}.$$

In the massive calculation $`ϵ=0.036`$ was obtained from a recent fit of Nason and Oleari  to ARGUS data. Alternatively, the Peterson fragmentation was replaced by fragmentation effects estimated by a leading order Monte Carlo (Pythia). Initial and final state radiation were not included. The results of both calculations for the low $`W`$ region are shown in Figs. 2 and 3.

The cross sections are compared with NLO QCD massive calculations using MRSG for the proton structure function (SF) and GRV-G HO for the photon. The theoretical massive calculations are below the data, in particular in the forward (proton) direction, although the Pythia fragmentation slightly improves the agreement. 

A comparison with massless calculations , which are expected to become valid mainly at higher $`p_{}^D^{}`$, is shown in Fig. 4 for several photon structure functions. Some sensitivity to the photon SF seems to be present, but the excess in the forward direction is evident. The structure function GS-G-96 HO describes the data best.

Recently Berezhnoy, Kiselev and Likhoded (BKL) have suggested a new model for describing $`D^{}`$ photoproduction . In this tree level pQCD $`O(\alpha \alpha _s^3)`$ calculation, they hadronize the ($`c,\overline{q}`$) state produced in pQCD, taking into account higher twist terms at $`p_{}m_c`$. Thus the model is supposed to be valid over the whole $`p_{}`$ range studied. No explicit resolved component is used. Singlet and octet color states both contribute to $`D^{}`$ production. The color state ratio $`O(8)/O(1)`$ is a free parameter in this model and was tuned to the ZEUS untagged results , yielding a value of 1.3.

Comparison of these calculations, for the same Octet/Singlet mixture, with the ZEUS tagged low $`W`$ data is shown in Fig. 5. A better agreement with the data is observed than that for the NLO calculations.