Measurement of inclusive and dijet D* meson cross sections in photoproduction at HERA

Abstract

The inclusive photoproduction of D* mesons and of D*-tagged dijets is investigated with the H1 detector at the ep collider HERA. The kinematic region covers small photon virtualities Q(2) LT 2 GeV2 and photon-proton centre-of-mass energies of 100 LT W-gamma p LT 285 GeV. Inclusive D* meson differential cross sections are measured for central rapidities vertical bar eta(D*)vertical bar LT 1.5 and transverse momenta p(T) (D*) GT 1.8 GeV. The heavy quark production process is further investigated in events with at least two jets with transverse momentum p(T) (jet) GT 3.5 GeV each, one containing the D* meson. Differential cross sections for D*-tagged dijet production and for correlations between the jets are measured in the range vertical bar eta(D*)vertical bar LT 1.5 and p(T) (D*) GT 2.1 GeV. The results are compared with predictions from Monte Carlo simulations and next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations.