Measurement of Open Beauty Production at HERA in the $D^*$ Muon Final State

The production of beauty quarks with a D*+- and a muon in the final state has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 114 pb-1. Low transverse-momentum thresholds for the muon and D* meson allow a measurement of beauty production closer to the production threshold than previous measurements. The beauty signal was extracted using the charge correlations and angular distributions of the muon with respect to the D* meson. Cross sections for photoproduction and deep inelastic scattering are somewhat higher than, but compatible with, next-to-leading-order QCD predictions, and compatible with other measurements.
Comment: Second submission: 36 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables, minor revisions, accepted by European Physical Journal C