Measurement of D*(+/-) meson production and determination of F-2(c(c)over-bar) at low Q(2) in deep-inelastic scattering at HERA

Abstract

Inclusive production of D* mesons in deep-inelastic ep scattering at HERA is studied in the range 5 LT Q(2) LT 100 GeV2 of the photon virtuality and 0.02 LT y LT 0.7 of the inelasticity of the scattering process. The observed phase space for the D* meson is (pT) (D*) GT 1.25 GeV and |eta( D*)| LT 1.8. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 348 pb(-1) collected with the H1 detector. Single and double differential cross sections are measured and the charm contribution F-2(c (c) over bar) to the proton structure function F-2 is determined. The results are compared to perturbative QCD predictions at next-to-leading order implementing different schemes for the charm mass treatment and with Monte Carlo models based on leading order matrix elements with parton showers.