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Persistent URL http://purl.org/net/epubs/work/29601
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Record Id 29601
Title Open Charm Production in Deep Inelastic Diffractive ep Scattering at HERA
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Abstract A study of open charm production in deep inelastic diffractive scattering at HERA, using 43.3 pb superscript -1 of data taken with the ZEUS detector, is presented. Diffractive interactions in which the virtual photon dissociates into a hadronic system X and the proton remains intact or dissociates into low mass state, Y, are identified by the presence of a large rapidity gap in the final state. Charm production is identified by the reconstruction of D*+bar (2010) mesons in the decay channel D*+ *a (D0 *a K-pi+) pi+ + (c.c.). The accessible kinematic region for this measurement is 6 < Q squared <400 GeV squared, 0.02 <y <0.7 pT(D*+bar) >1.5 GeV, ta(D*+bar) <1.5, 0.001 <x ip < 0.016 and beta <0.8, in which the cross section for diffractive D*+bar production is measured to be 245 +bar 39 (stat) superscript +66 subscript -60 (syst) pb. The ratio of diffractive to total of D*+bar production in this region is also measured and found to be 6.3 +bar 1.1 (stat) superscript +1.6 subscript -1.4 (syst) %, which is consistent with the fraction of diffractively - produced events in inclusive deep inelastic scattering. Differential D*+bar cross sections are also measured as a function of Q squared, W, x ip, pT (D*+bar) and eta (D*+bar) and are compared to expectations from different phenomenological models. The data clearly show that diffractive heavy flavour production is not suppressed relative to light flavours and favour a substantial hard gluon component in the diffractive exchange. Limited statistics and significant theoretical uncertainties prevent further discrimination between different theoretical models.
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Language English (EN)
Type Details URI(s) Local file(s) Year
Thesis RAL Theses RAL-TH-1999-008. 1999. 1999