Photoproduction and electroproduction of charm at high energies

Abstract

We estimate the differential and total cross sections for both the photoproduction of vector D*-meson and its yield in deep inelastic scattering at the HERA collider in the framework of model motivated by perturbative calculations in QCD. The offered model allows us to take into account higher twists over the transverse momentum of meson at p_T ~ m_c and to correctly approach the dominance of $c$-quark fragmentation at p_T >> m_c. We consider a possibility for the hadronization of color-octet c q-bar state into the meson. The combined contribution by the singlet and octet-color terms results in a good agreement with the experimental data for both the photoproduction and the production in deep inelastic scattering.