Direct Measurement of the Gluon Polarisation in the Nucleon via Charmed Meson Production

We present the first measurement of the gluon polarisation in the nucleon based on the photon-gluon fusion process tagged by charmed meson production and decay to charged K and pi. The data were collected in polarised muon scattering off a polarised deuteron target by the COMPASS collaboration at CERN during 2002-2004. The result of this LO analysis is _x = -0.47 +- 0.44 (stat) +- 0.15 (syst) at ~= 0.11 and a scale mu^2 ~ 13 (GeV/c)^2.