Inclusive photoproduction of bottom quarks for low and medium pT in the general-mass variable-flavour-number scheme

We present predictions for b-quark production in photoproduction and compare with experimental data from HERA. Our theoretical predictions are obtained at next-to-leading-order in the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme, an approach which takes into account the finite mass of the b quarks. We use realistic evolved nonperturbative fragmentation functions obtained from fits to e+e− data. We find in general good agreement of data with both the GM-VFNS and the FFNS calculations, while the more precise ZEUS data seem to prefer the GM-VFNS predictions.