Inclusive photoproduction of hadrons at HERA

Abstract

We study inclusive photoproduction of hadrons at HERA via both direct and resolved photons to next-to-leading order (NLO) in the QCD-improved parton model. We predict transverse-momentum ($\pt$) and rapidity ($\ylab$) distributions and compare them with recent data by the H1 Collaboration. To estimate the theoretical error of the predictions, we investigate their dependence on the choice of renormalization and factorization scales, subtraction scheme, and parton density functions (PDF). We also introduce a new NLO set of fragmentation functions for charged pions and kaons, which is extracted from $e^+e^-$ data at $\sqrt s=29$ GeV, and confront it with the H1 data. This enables us to test quantitatively the QCD-improved parton model and, in particular, the factorization theorem at the quantum level.