Charm production in deep inelastic and diffractive scattering

Abstract

We consider the production of charm by real and virtual photons. Special attention is paid to diffractive charm production, which provides information on the gluonic content of the Pomeron. Our calculations are based on the gluon distributions of the CKMT-model, which is shown to lead to agreement with the data on open charm production in deep inelastic scattering. We compare predictions for diffractive charm production of different models for the distribution of gluons in the Pomeron. Experiments at HERA should be able to discriminate between them. Predictions for beauty production in diffractive and non-diffractive interactions of photons are also given.