Inclusive Production of D^+, D^0, D_s^+ and D^*+ Mesons in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

Abstract

Inclusive production cross sections are measured in deep inelastic scattering at HERA for meson states composed of a charm quark and a light antiquark or the charge conjugate. The measurements cover the kinematic region of photon virtuality 2 < Q^2 < 100 GeV^2, inelasticity 0.05 < y < 0.7, D meson transverse momenta p_t(D) > 2.5 GeV and pseudorapidity |eta(D)| < 1.5. The identification of the D-meson decays and the reduction of the combinatorial background profit from the reconstruction of displaced secondary vertices by means of the H1 silicon vertex detector. The production of charmed mesons containing the light quarks u, d and s is found to be compatible with a description in which the hard scattering is followed by a factorisable and universal hadronisation process.