Measurement of inclusive charm production in two-photon collisions at LEP

The cross section of inclusive charm production in two- photon collisions <math> <f> <g>s</g><fen lp='par'><rm>e⁺e^-&rarr;e⁺e^-c<a><ac>c</ac><ac>&d1;</ac></a>X</rm><rp post='par'></fen> </f> </math> is measured at the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider at the European Center for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN). The data was obtained with the L3 detector at the center-of-mass energy of 91 GeV (LEP1) and for the first time at the center-of-mass energies from 130&ndash;183 GeV (LEP2). Charmed hadrons are identified by electrons and muons from semileptonic decays. The measured cross section agrees with next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD calculations. The direct process <math> <f> <g>g</g><g>g</g>&rarr;<rm>c<a><ac>c</ac><ac>&d1;</ac></a></rm> </f> </math> is found to be insufficient to describe the data. The measured cross section values and event distributions require contributions from resolved processes, which are sensitive to the gluon density in the photon.