Contribution of the Hadronic Component of the Photon to Charm Production at the HERA Accelerator.

The contribution to the cross section for D[sup *]-meson photoproduction at the HERA accelerator from the scattering of the virtual c&cmacr; vector mesons in the content of the photon on a proton is estimated within the vector-dominance model. It is shown that this mechanism plays an important role throughout the range of D[sup *]-meson transverse momenta available at the HERA facility and that its inclusion significantly improves a theoretical description of the experimental differential distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]