Title: Measurement of D+ production in Deep Inelastic ep Scattering with the ZEUS detector at HERA
Abstract: Charm production in deep inelastic ep scattering was measured with the ZEUS detector using an integrated luminosity of 354 pb -1 .Charm quarks were identified by reconstructing D + mesons in the D + → K -π + π + decay channel.Lifetime information was used to reduce combinatorial background substantially.Differential cross sections as a function of the photon virtuality at the electron vertex, Q 2 , the inelasticity, y, the transverse momentum, p T (D + ), and pseudorapidity, η(D + ), of the D + meson were measured in the kinematic region 5 < Q 2 < 1000 GeV 2 , 0.02 < y < 0.7, 1.5 < p T (D + ) < 15 GeV and |η(D + )| < 1.6.Next-to-leading-order QCD predictions are compared to the data.The charm contribution, F c c 2 , to the proton structure-function F 2 was extracted from the double-differential cross sections.