Spin-dependent hadro- and photoproduction of heavy quarks at next-to-leading order of QCD

In this thesis, we have studied heavy quark hadro- and photoproduction in detail and examined the possibilities of using heavy quark production for the extraction of the polarised parton distribution functions. All calculations are performed at O(αs3) and O(ααs2) accuracy, respectively, and theoretical uncertainties due to the choice of scales μf,r and the heavy quark mass mQ have been discussed in detail. Based on our theoretical results we have presented detailed phenomenological studies for the existing PHENIX and STAR experiments at BNL-RHIC and the COMPASS experiment at CERN. Predictions have been made for possible future experiments at a low-energy antiproton-proton collider at GSI-FAIR, a proton-proton collider at J-PARC and an upcoming high-energy electron-ion collider (EIC).