Heavy quark production in the semihard QCD approach at THERA

Abstract

In the framework of the semihard ($k_T$ factorization) QCD approach, we consider the photoproduction of D* mesons associated with two hadron jets and the D* production in DIS at THERA conditions with the emphasis on the BFKL and CCFM dynamics of gluon distributions. In the photoproduction of D* mesons the attention is focused on the variable $x_\gamma$, which is the fraction of the photon momentum contributed to a pair of jets with largest $p_T$. We show that our theoretical results are sensitive to the BFKL type dynamics which may be investigated at THERA energies. We also discuss possible effect of $\J/\psi$ meson spin alignement, which is thought to be a vivid manifestation of gluon off-shellness.