No Arabic abstract
The production of beauty and charm quarks in ep interactions has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA for exchanged four-momentum squared 5 < Q^2 < 1000 GeV^2 using an integrated luminosity of 354 pb^{-1}. The beauty and charm content in events with at least one jet have been extracted using the invariant mass of charged tracks associated with secondary vertices and the decay-length significance of these vertices. Differential cross sections as a function of Q^2, Bjorken x, jet transverse energy and pseudorapidity were measured and compared with next-to-leading-order QCD calculations. The beauty and charm contributions to the proton structure functions were extracted from the double-differential cross section as a function of x and Q^2. The running beauty-quark mass, m_b at the scale m_b, was determined from a QCD fit at next-to-leading order to HERA data for the first time and found to be 4.07 pm 0.14 (fit} ^{+0.01}_{-0.07} (mod.) ^{+0.05}_{-0.00} (param.) ^{+0.08}_{-0.05} (theo) GeV.
The production of beauty quarks in ep interactions has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA for exchanged four-momentum squared Q^2 > 10 GeV^2, using an integrated luminosity of 363 pb^{-1}. The beauty events were identified using electrons from semileptonic b decays with a transverse momentum 0.9 < p_T^e < 8 GeV and pseudorapidity |eta^e| < 1.5. Cross sections for beauty production were measured and compared with next-to-leading-order QCD calculations. The beauty contribution to the proton structure function F_2 was extracted from the double-differential cross section as a function of Bjorken-x and Q^2.
Selected new results from the H1 and ZEUS collaborations on $ep$ interactions at 300 - 318 GeV centre-of-mass energy are presented. The full pre-upgrade integrated luminosity of HERA of 110 pb$^{-1}$ is used. Charm cross sections are measured up to high values of $x_B$ and $Q^2$ and are found to be well described by NLO QCD in the 3 flavour scheme. Orbitally excited $D$ mesons are observed; radial excitations are searched for, but are not seen. The first $b$ cross section measurement is confirmed with a lifetime based method, establishing the excess over NLO QCD.
Measurements of open charm and beauty production cross sections in deep inelastic $ep$ scattering at HERA from the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations are combined. Reduced cross sections are obtained in the kinematic range of negative four-momentum transfer squared of the photon $2.5$ GeV$^2<Q^2<2000$ GeV$^2$ and Bjorken scaling variable $3cdot10^{-5}<x_{text{Bj}}<5cdot10^{-2}$. The combination method accounts for the correlations of the statistical and systematic uncertainties among the different datasets. Perturbative QCD calculations are compared to the combined data. A next-to-leading order QCD analysis is performed using these data together with the combined inclusive deep inelastic scattering cross sections from HERA. The running charm- and beauty-quark masses are determined as $m_c(m_c) = 1.290^{+0.046}_{-0.041}text{(exp/fit)}^{+0.062}_{-0.014}text{(model)}^{+0.003}_{-0.031}text{(parameterisation)}$ GeV and $m_b(m_b) = 4.049^{+0.104}_{-0.109}text{(exp/fit)}^{+0.090}_{-0.032}text{(model)}^{+0.001}_{-0.031} text{(parameterisation)}$~GeV.
Results on open charm and beauty production and on the search for top production in high-energy electron-proton collisions at HERA are reviewed. This includes a discussion of relevant theoretical aspects, a summary of the available measurements and measurement techniques, and their impact on improved understanding of QCD and its parameters, such as parton density functions and charm- and beauty-quark masses. The impact of these results on measurements at the LHC and elsewhere is also addressed.
Measurements of $D^{*}(2010)$ meson production in diffractive deep inelastic scattering $(5<Q^{2}<100~{rm GeV}^{2})$ are presented which are based on HERA data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy $sqrt{s} = 319{rm~GeV}$ with an integrated luminosity of $287$ pb$^{-1}$. The reaction $ep rightarrow eXY$ is studied, where the system $X$, containing at least one $D^{*}(2010)$ meson, is separated from a leading low-mass proton dissociative system $Y$ by a large rapidity gap. The kinematics of $D^{*}$ candidates are reconstructed in the $D^{*}rightarrow K pipi$ decay channel. The measured cross sections compare favourably with next-to-leading order QCD predictions, where charm quarks are produced via boson-gluon fusion. The charm quarks are then independently fragmented to the $D^{*}$ mesons. The calculations rely on the collinear factorisation theorem and are based on diffractive parton densities previously obtained by H1 from fits to inclusive diffractive cross sections. The data are further used to determine the diffractive to inclusive $D^{*}$ production ratio in deep inelastic scattering.