Comparison between the various descriptions for charm electroproduction and the HERA-data.pdf

a r X i v : h e p - p h / 9 7 0 7 2 6 3 v 1 7 J u l 1 9 9 7 NIKHEF/97-026 ITP-SB-97-35 DESY 97-124 INLO-PUB-6/97 Comparison between the various descriptions for charm electroproduction and the HERA-data M. Buza 1 NIKHEF/UVA, POB 41882, NL-1009 DB Amsterdam, The Netherlands Y. Matiounine Institute for Theoretical Physics, State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York 11794-3840, USA J. Smith 2 Deutsches Electronen-Synchrotron DESY Notkestrasse 85, D-22603, Hamburg Germany W.L. van Neerven Instituut-Lorentz, University of Leiden, PO Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands July 1997 Abstract We examine the charm component F2,c(x,Q 2, m2) of the proton structure function F2(x,Q 2) in three different schemes and compare the results with the data in the x and Q2 region explored by the HERA experiments. Studied are (1) the three flavour number scheme (TFNS) where the production mechanisms are given by the photon- gluon fusion process and the higher order reactions with three light-flavour parton densities as input (2) the four flavour number scheme (FFNS) where F2,c is expressed in four light flavour densities including one for the charm quark and (3) a variable- flavour number scheme (VFNS) which interpolates between the latter two. Both the VFNS and the TFNS give good descriptions of the experimental data. However one cannot use the FFNS for the description of the data at small Q2. 1supported by the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) 2on leave from ITP, SUNY at Stony Brook, New York 11794-3840, USA 1 The study of charm production in deep-inelastic electron-proton scattering has become an important issue in the extraction of parton densities in the proton. The reason is that the charm content F2,c(x,Q 2, m2) (m is the mass of the charm quark) in the proton structure function F2(x,Q 2) has grown from around one percent in the x and Q2 region covered by the EMC experiment [1] to around twenty-five percent in the x and Q2 region covered by the