Professor Amanda Cooper-Sarkar

Abstract:

Inclusive transverse momentum spectra of charged particles in photoproduction events in the laboratory pseudorapidity range -1.2<η<1.4 have been measured up to pT=8 GeV usign the ZEUS detector. Diffractive and non-diffractive reactions have been selected with an average γp centre of mass (c.m.) energy of 〈W〉=180 GeV. For diffractive reactions, the pT spectra of the photon dissociation events have been measured in two intervals of the dissociated photon mass with mean values 〈MX〉=5 GeV and 10 GeV. The inclusive transverse momentum spectra fall exponentially in the low pT region. The non-diffractive data show a pronounced high pT tail departing from the exponential shape. The pT distributions are compared to lower energy photoproduction data and to hadron-hadron collisions at a similar c.m. energy. The data are also compared to the results of a next-to-leading order QCD calculation. © 1995 Springer-Verlag.

Abstract:

We report the first observation of charmed mesons with the ZEUS detector at HERA using the decay channel D^*+→ (D⁰→ K^-π⁺)π⁺(+c.c.). Clear signals in the mass difference ΔM=M(D^*)-M(D⁰) as well as in the M(Kπ) distribution at the D⁰mass are found. The ep cross section for inclusive D^*±production with Q²< 4 GeV²in the γp centre-of-mass energy range 115 < W < 275 GeV has been determined to be (32±7-7 ⁺⁴) nb in the kinematic regionpt(D^*) ≥ 1.7 GeV, |η(D^*)| < 1.5. Extrapolating outside this region, assuming a mass of the charm quark of 1.5 GeV, we estimate the ep charm cross section to be σ(ep → ccX) = (0.45 ± 0.11-0.22 ^+0.37) μb at s=296 GeV and 〈W〉 = 198 GeV. The average γp charm cross section σ(γp → ccX) is found to be (6.3 ± 2.2-3.0 ^+6.3) μb at 〈W〉 = 163 GeV and (16.9 ± 5.2-8.5 ^+13.9) μb at 〈W〉 = 243 GeV. The increase of the total charm photoproduction cross section by one order of magnitude with respect to low energy data experiments is well described by QCD NLO calculations using singular gluon distributions in the proton. © 1995.