Measurement of Inclusive D± Production in Two-Photon Collisions at LEP

Abstract Inclusive production of D ∗± mesons in two-photon collisions was measured by the L3 experiment at LEP. The data were collected at a centre-of-mass energy s =189 GeV with an integrated luminosity of 176.4 pb −1 . Differential cross sections of the process e + e − → e + e − D ∗± X are determined as functions of the transverse momentum and pseudorapidity of the D ∗± mesons in the kinematic region 1 GeV T D ∗ GeV and |η D ∗ | . The cross section integrated over this phase space domain is measured to be 132±22 (stat.) ±26 (syst.) pb . The differential cross sections are compared with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations.