Measurement of D meson production and F2 in deep-inelastic scattering at HERA

The inclusive production of D ∗± (2010) mesons in deep-inelastic scattering is studied with the H1 detector at HERA. In the kinematic region 1< Q 2 <100 GeV 2 and 0.05< y <0.7 an e + p cross section for inclusive D ∗± meson production of 8.50±0.42(stat.) +1.21 −1.00 (syst.) nb is measured in the visible range p tD ∗ >1.5 GeV and |η D ∗ |<1.5 . Single and double differential inclusive D ∗± meson cross sections are compared to perturbative QCD calculations in two different evolution schemes. The charm contribution to the proton structure, F 2 c ( x , Q 2 ), is determined by extrapolating the visible charm cross section to the full phase space. This contribution is found to rise from about 10% at Q 2 =1.5 GeV 2 to more than 25% at Q 2 =60 GeV 2 corresponding to x values ranging from 5×10 −5 to 3×10 −3 .