Measurement of D ± production in deep inelastic ep scattering with the ZEUS detector at HERA

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 were measured in the kinematic region 5 < Q ² < 1000 GeV², 0.02 < y < 0.7, 1.5 < p _T (D ^±) < 15 GeV and |η(D ^±)| < 1.6, where Q ² is the photon virtuality, y is the inelasticity, and p _T (D ^±) and η(D ^±) are the transverse momentum and the pseudorapidity of the D ^± meson, respectively. Next-to-leading-order QCD predictions are compared to the data. The charm contribution, $ F_2^{{c\overline{c}}} $ , to the proton structure-function F ₂ was extracted.