# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The standard parton model is based on the DGLAP  evolution equations, which re-sums contributions from $`[\alpha _s\text{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)]`$. It represents an one-dimensional phase space approximation for the parton motion, also known as the collinear approximation, which gives the correct behavior of the structure functions at not too small values of $`x`$. When $`x`$ becomes smaller, also contributions from $`[\alpha _s\text{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)\text{ln}(1/x)]`$ and $`[\alpha _s\text{ln}(1/x)]`$ need to be considered. In the so called $`k_t`$ factorization or semi-hard approach (SHA) , the transverse momenta of the partons in the evolution from large $`x`$ at the proton vertex towards small $`x`$ at the hard interaction vertex are taken into account. This evolution in $`x`$ has been formulated in terms of the BFKL  evolution equation. The CCFM  evolution equation includes coherence effects via angular ordering and it reproduces the BFKL (DGLAP) evolution equation in the small (large) $`x`$ limits, respectively.

The resummation  of the terms $`[\alpha _s\text{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)]`$, $`[\alpha _s\text{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)\text{ln}(1/x)]`$ and $`[\alpha _s\text{ln}(1/x)]`$ in SHA results in the so called unintegrated gluon distribution $`(x,k_t^2,Q_0^2)`$, which determines the probability to find a gluon carrying the longitudinal momentum fraction $`x`$ and transverse momentum $`k_t`$. The factorization scale $`Q_0^2`$ (such that $`\alpha _s(Q_0^2)<1`$) indicates the non perturbative input distribution. They obey the BFKL  or CCFM  equation and reduce to the conventional parton densities $`F(x,\mu ^2)`$ once the $`k_t`$ dependence is integrated out:

$$_0^{\mu ^2}(x,k_t^2,Q_0^2)𝑑k_t^2=xF(x,\mu ^2,Q_0^2).$$
(1)   
However, in CCFM the unintegrated parton distribution $`𝒜(x,k_t^2,Q_0^2,\overline{q}^2)`$ (instead of $`(x,k_t^2,Q_0^2)`$) depends also on the maximum angle for any emission corresponding to $`\overline{q}`$ (coming from angular ordering). In the small $`x`$ limit they reduce to $``$ .

To calculate the cross section of a physical process, the unintegrated functions $``$ or $`𝒜`$ have to be convoluted with off-mass shell matrix elements  corresponding to the relevant partonic subprocesses. In off-mass shell matrix element the virtual gluon polarization tensor is taken in form of SHA prescription :

$$L_{\mu \nu }^{(g)}=\overline{ϵ_2^\mu ϵ_2^\nu }=p^\mu p^\nu x^2/|k_t|^2=k_t^\mu k_t^\nu /|k_t|^2.$$
(2)   
The specific properties of semi-hard theory may manifest in several ways. With respect to inclusive production properties, one obtains an additional contribution to the cross sections due to the integration over the $`k_t^2`$ region above $`\mu ^2`$ and the broadening of the $`p_t`$ spectra due to extra transverse momentum of the interacting gluons . It is important that the gluons are not on-mass shell but are characterized by virtual masses proportional to their transverse momentum. This also assumes a modification of the polarization density matrix. A striking consequence of this fact on the $`J/\psi `$ spin alignment has been demonstrated in .

In this paper we present predictions for the production of $`D^{}`$ mesons in photo-production at HERA using the SHA approach. We use an unintegrated gluon density coming from a solution of the CCFM equation (see ). We also show predictions based on a parton level Monte Carlo integration using a BFKL-like parameterization of the unintegrated gluon density, and we compare both predictions.

## 2 Unintegrated gluon distribution and CCFM evolution

The parton evolution at small values of $`x`$ is believed to be best described by the CCFM evolution equation , which for $`x0`$ is equivalent to the BFKL evolution equation  and for large $`x`$ reproduces the standard DGLAP equations. The CCFM evolution equation takes coherence effects of the radiated gluons into account via angular ordering. In  it is shown that a very good description of the inclusive structure function $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$ and the production of forward jets in DIS, which are believed to be a prominent signature of small $`x`$ parton dynamics, can be obtained from the CCFM evolution equation. The main important point there was the treatment of the non-Sudakov form factor, which suppresses radiation at small values of $`x`$. In Fig. 1 we show the gluon density obtained from this solution of the CCFM equation  as a function of $`x`$ for different values of $`k_t^2`$ at $`\overline{q}^2=10`$ GeV<sup>2</sup>.

In Fig. 2 we show the gluon density as a function of $`k_t^2`$ for different values of $`x`$ at $`\overline{q}^2=10`$ GeV<sup>2</sup>.

For comparison, we also use the results of a BFKL-like parameterization of the unintegrated gluon distribution $`(x,k_t^2,\mu ^2)`$, according to the prescription in . The proposed method lies upon a straightforward perturbative solution of the BFKL equation where the collinear gluon density $`xG(x,\mu ^2)`$ from the standard GRV set  is used as the boundary condition in the integral form (1). Technically, the unintegrated gluon density is calculated as a convolution of collinear gluon density with universal weight factors :

$$(x,k_t^2,\mu ^2)=_x^1𝒢(\eta ,k_t^2,\mu ^2)\frac{x}{\eta }G(\frac{x}{\eta },\mu ^2)𝑑\eta ,$$
(3)   
$$𝒢(\eta ,k_t^2,\mu ^2)=\frac{\overline{\alpha }_s}{xk_t^2}J_0(2\sqrt{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{ln}(1/\eta )\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/k_t^2)}),k_t^2<\mu ^2,$$
(4)   
$$𝒢(\eta ,k_t^2,\mu ^2)=\frac{\overline{\alpha }_s}{xk_t^2}I_0(2\sqrt{\overline{\alpha }_s\mathrm{ln}(1/\eta )\mathrm{ln}(k_t^2/\mu ^2)}),k_t^2>\mu ^2,$$
(5)   
where $`J_0`$ and $`I_0`$ stand for Bessel functions (of real and imaginary arguments, respectively), and $`\overline{\alpha }_s=3\alpha _s/\pi `$. The latter parameter is connected with the Pomeron trajectory intercept: $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\overline{\alpha }_s4\mathrm{ln}2`$ in the LO and $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\overline{\alpha }_s4\mathrm{ln}2N\overline{\alpha }_s^2`$ in the NLO approximations, respectively, where $`N`$ is a number . In the following we use $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.35`$.

The presence of the two different parameters, $`\mu ^2`$ and $`k_t^2`$, in eq.(3) for unintegrated gluon distribution $`(x,k_t^2,\mu ^2)`$ refers to the fact that the evolution of parton densities is done in two steps. First the DGLAP scheme is applied to evolve the structure function from $`Q_0^2`$ to $`\mu ^2`$ within the collinear approximation. After that eqs.(3)-(5) are used to develop the parton transverse momenta $`k_t^2`$. This is in contrast to the CCFM evolution, where the evolution of “longitudinal” and “transverse” components occurs simultaneously.

From Figs. 1 and 2 we see that the BFKL approach gives much harder $`k_t`$ spectrum than the CCFM approach. However, it has been argued extensively in the literature , that in BFKL a so-called “consistency constraint” should be applied, so simulate at least a part of the large next-to-leading corrections. For comparison we also show in Figs. 1 and 2 the unintegrated gluon distribution from Kwiecinski, Martin, Stasto <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1A. Stasto kindly provided us (H.J.) with the program.. This shows that the shape of the distributions from BFKL including the “consistency constraint” is similar to the one obtained from CCFM and that the gluon density is stronger suppressed at large $`k_t`$ as compared to the approach in . Unfortunately we could not use the the gluon distribution from , because it started only at $`k_t^2>1`$.

## 3 Predictions for $`D^{}`$ meson production at HERA

We have used the hadron level Monte Carlo program Cascade described in  to predict the cross section for $`D^{}`$ photo-production at HERA energies. The unintegrated gluon distribution was obtained from the solution of the CCFM equation described in . The scale in $`\alpha _s`$ was set to $`k_t^2`$ in the parton evolution and we used $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^{(4)}=0.2`$ GeV. For the hard scattering the off-shell matrix element for heavy quarks (including the heavy quark mass with $`m_c=1.5`$ GeV) as described in  are used together with the one-loop expression for $`\alpha _s`$ with $`k_t^2`$ (of the gluon entering the hard scattering) as the scale. The complete initial state cascade is simulated via a backward evolution as described in . The hadronization was performed by the Lund string fragmentation JETSET . The Peterson function with $`ϵ=0.06`$ was used for the charm quark fragmentation.

In Fig. 3 we show the prediction of $`D^{}`$ production as a function of the transverse momentum $`p_t^D^{}`$ using the Cascade Monte Carlo described above and compare it with the measurement of the ZEUS collaboration . We observe a rather good description of the $`p_t`$ spectrum.

In Fig. 4 we show the $`D^{}`$ cross section as a function of the pseudo-rapidity $`\eta ^D^{}`$ for different regions in $`p_t`$. Also here we observe a good description of the experimental data points. Here the main important point is the cross section at values of $`\eta ^D^{}>0.5`$.

For comparison we used the results of a calculation of  with a parameterization for the unintegrated gluon distribution $`(x,k_t^2,\mu ^2)`$, according to the prescription of . Here the scale $`m_t^2`$ is used in $`\alpha _s`$ The results are also shown in Figs. 3 and 4. In general both prediction agree rather nicely. The differences observed are entirely due to the different behavior of the unintegrated gluon distribution as a function of $`x`$ and $`k_t^2`$. In addition in the CCFM approach angular ordering and the maximum angle allowed for any emission plays a important role. The results presented here are similar to the ones obtained from a full NLO calculation. In the SHA approach the gluon entering the hard interaction is off-mass shell, which is a similar situation as in a NLO calculation where the propagators in the 3 parton final states are fully considered. This is in contrast to the LO DGLAP (collinear) case, where the gluon is always treated on-mass shell. However if, in LO DGLAP, heavy flavor excitation is included (via resolved photon processes) then again a similar situation occurs. It was found in  that including heavy flavor excitation in LO Monte Carlo programs, lead to better description of the data. The semi-hard approach presented here shows, that a good description of also the photo-production of heavy flavor can be achieved in a theoretically consistent way, without including artificially large intrinsic transverse momenta, or heavy flavor excitation.

## 4 Conclusions

We have shown that using a unintegrated gluon distribution obtained from a solution of the CCFM evolution equation, that describes the structure function $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$ and the production of forward jets in DIS at HERA, we can also describe the cross sections of inclusive $`D^\pm `$ meson production measured at HERA. Within the semi-hard approach the measured cross section as a function of $`p_t`$ and $`\eta _D^{}`$ can be nicely described. The results are similar to NLO calculations. The shape of the gluon $`k_t`$ distribution is driven by the BFKL or CCFM evolution equations. This shows that there is no place to include any artificially large intrinsic transverse momentum distribution of parton inside the proton.

It is also interesting to note, that within the semi-hard approach, heavy flavor excitation in the photon is consistently included, by the fact that a gluon radiated close to the quark box can have a transverse momentum larger that of the quarks.

## 5 Acknowledgments

We are grateful to M. Ryskin and Y. Shabelski for many discussions about the semi-hard approach. We thank L. Gladilin for many discussions about the ZEUS $`D^{}`$ data.