Measurement of D*+- diffractive cross sections in photoproduction at HERA

Abstract

The first measurement of D*+/- meson diffractive photoproduction cross sections has been performed with the ZEUS detector at the HERA $ep$ collider, using an integrated luminosity of 38 pb^-1. The measurement has been performed for photon--proton center-of-mass energies in the range 130 < W < 280 GeV and photon virtualities Q^2 < 1 GeV^2. D*+/- mesons have been reconstructed with p_T(D*)>2 GeV and -1.5<\eta(D*)<1.5 from the decay channel D*+ --> D^0 \pi^+_s with D^0 --> K-\pi^+ (+c.c.). The diffractive component has been selected with 0.001<x_Pom<0.018. The measured diffractive cross section in this kinematic range is: \sigma_(ep --> e'D*Xp') = 0.74 +/- 0.21 (stat.)^{+0.27}_{-0.18} (syst.) +/-0.16 (p. diss.) ~nb (ZEUS preliminary). Measured integrated and differential cross sections have been compared to theoretical expectations.