The Heavy-Flavour Contribution to Proton Structure

Abstract

We present theoretical and experimental considerations pertaining to deeply inelastic heavy-flavour production at HERA. The various theoretical uncertainties in the cross section calculation are discussed. Cuts are imposed to determine the fraction of charm production accessible to the detectors. The production of charm at asymptotic $Q^2$ and bottom production are also covered. Experimental aspects include current charm production data analysis and prospects for future analyses including anticipated high precision and distinguishing photon-gluon fusion charm events from excitation from the charm parton density. The feasibility of measuring $F_2^{b\overline b}(x,Q^2)$ is investigated.