Inclusive D* Meson Cross Sections and D* Jet Correlations in Photoproduction at HERA

Abstract

Differential photoproduction cross sections are measured for events containing D* mesons. The data were taken with the H1 detector at the ep collider HERA and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 51.1 pb-1. The kinematic region covers small photon virtualities Q^2 < 0.01 GeV^2 and photon-proton centre-of-mass energies of 171 < W_gammap < 256 GeV. The details of the heavy quark production process are further investigated in events with one or two jets in addition to the D* meson. Differential cross sections for D* jet production are determined and the correlations between the D* meson and the jet(s) are studied. The results are compared with perturbative QCD predictions applying collinear- or kt -factorisation.

29 pages, 9 figures, 8 tables, submitted to EPJ