We study systematically the sensitivity of the photon structure function data on the gluon contents of the photon, by using the leading order Altarelli-Parisi (AP) equations. The charm quark contribution is studied in the quark parton model and by using the massive quark AP equations of Gl\"uck, Hoffmann, and Reya. The present photon structure function data are found to allow a wide range of gluon distributions in the photon. We give a set of six scale-dependent parton distributions in the photon (WHIT1 to WHIT6), which have systematically different gluon contents. The sensitivity of the structure function at small x and that of the total charm quark production cross section to the effective gluon distribution are discussed.
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Hagiwara et al. (1995) studied this question.
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