Measurement of the inclusive D production in collisions at LEP

The inclusive production of D*+/- mesons in two-photon collisions is, measured with the ALEPH detector at e(+)e(-) centre-of-mass energies from 183 GeV to 209 GeV. A total of 360 +/- 27 D*+/- meson events are observed from an integrated luminosity of 699 pb(-1). Contributions from direct and single-resolved processes are separated using the ratio of the transverse momentum p(t)(D*+/-) of the D*+/- to the visible invariant mass W-vis of the event. Differential cross sections of D*+/- production as functions of p(t)(D*+/-) and the pseudorapidity \eta(D*+/-)\ are measured in the range 2 GeV/c < P-t(D*+/-) < 12 GeV/c and \eta(D*+/-)\ < 1.5. They are compared to next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD calculations. The extrapolation of the integrated visible D*+/- cross section to the total charm cross section, based on the Pythia Monte Carlo program, yields sigma(e(+)e(-) --> e(+)e(-)c (c) over bar)((roots)=197 GeV) = 731 +/- 74(stat) +/- 47(syst) +/- 157(extr) pb.