Next-to-Leading Order Corrections to Heavy Flavour Production in Longitudinally Polarized Photon-Nucleon Collisions

Abstract

A complete next-to-leading order calculation of longitudinally polarized heavy quark photoproduction is presented. All results of the purturbative calculation are given in detail. For reactions and energies of interest cross sections differential in the transverse momentum and rapidity of the heavy quark, total cross sections and the corresponding asymmetries are given. Errors in the asymmetries are estimated and the possibility to distinguish between various scerarios of the polarized gluon distribution is discussed. Our results are compared with other related publications.