Electroproduction of D*± mesons at high energies

Abstract

A comparative analysis of the predictions of the collinear parton model and the kT-factorization approach is performed for the case of the D*-meson electroproduction at the HERA ep collider. It is shown that, owing to effectively taking into account, in noncollinear distributions, next-order corrections in the strong coupling constant αs, the kT-factorization approach increases, in contrast to the predictions of the collinear parton model, the absolute value of the cross sections for charmed-meson electroproduction by approximately a factor of 1.5 to 2. As a result, the agreement with experimental data is improved. This is not so only for the pseudorapidity spectrum, whose shape differs considerably from the experimental one and depends greatly on the choice of parametrization of the noncollinear gluon distribution within the proton.