Measurement of charm and beauty production in deep inelastic ep scattering from decays into muons at HERA

Abstract

The production of charm and beauty quarks in ep interactions has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA for squared four-momentum exchange Q^2>20 GeV^2, using an integrated luminosity of 126 pb^{-1}. Charm and beauty quarks were identified through their decays into muons. Differential cross sections were measured for muon transverse momenta p_T^{\mu}>1.5 GeV and pseudorapidities -1.6<\eta^{\mu}<2.3, as a function of p_T^{\mu}, \eta^{\mu}, Q^2 and Bjorken x. The charm and beauty contributions to the proton structure function F_2 were also extracted. The results agree with previous measurements based on independent techniques and are well described by QCD predictions.