Measurement of D± and D0 production in deep inelastic scattering using a lifetime tag at HERA

The production of D± and D0 mesons has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 133.6 pb-1. The measurements cover the kinematic range 5<Q2<1000 GeV2, 0.02<y<0.7, 1.5<pDT<15 GeV and vertical stroke ηD vertical stroke <1.6. Combinatorial background to the D meson signals is reduced by using the ZEUS microvertex detector to reconstruct displaced secondary vertices. Production cross sections are compared with the predictions of next-to-leading-order QCD which is found to describe the data well. Measurements are extrapolated to the full kinematic phase space in order to obtain the open-charm contribution, Fcantic2, to the proton structure function, F2. (orig.)