Ratio of J/Psi production cross sections in deep inelastic muon scattering from tin and carbon

Abstract We present results on J/ψ production in muon interactions with tin and carbon targets at incident muon energies of 200 and 280 GeV. The ratio of cross sections per nucleon for J/ψ production on tin and carbon, R (Sn/C), is studied as a function of p T 2 , z and x . We find an enhancement for coherent J/ψ production R coh (Sn/C) = 1.54 ± 0.07, a suppression for quasielastic production R qe (Sn/C) = 0.79 ± 0.06 and for inelastic production R in (Sn/C) = 1.13 ± 0.08. The inelastic cross section ratio can be interpreted within the Colour Singlet model as an enhancement of the gluon distribution in tin with respect to that in carbon. The dependence of the ratio on z and p T 2 can explain the discrepancy between the results obtained in previous experiments.