Measurement of the inclusive $D*^{+-}$ production in $\gamma-\gamma$ collisions at LEP

The inclusive production of D$^{*\pm}$ mesons in two-photon collisions is measured with the ALEPH detector at $\epem$ centre-of-mass energies from 183$\unit{GeV}$ to 209$\unit{GeV}$. A total of $360 \pm 27$ D$^{*\pm}$ meson events were observed from an integrated luminosity of $699\unit{pb^{-1}}$. Contributions from direct and single-resolved processes are separated using the ratio of the transverse momentum $p_{\rmt}^{\rm D^{*\pm}}$ of the D$^{*\pm}$ to the visible invariant mass $W_{\mathrm{vis}}$ of the event. Differential cross sections of D$^{*\pm}$ production as functions of $p_{\rm t}^{\rm D^{*\pm}}$ and the pseudorapidity $|\eta^{\rm D^{*\pm}}| $ are measured in the range $ 2\unit{GeV}/c < p_{\rm t}^{\rm D^{*\pm}} < 12\unit{GeV}/c $ and $ |\eta^{\rm D^{*\pm}}| < 1.5 $. They are compared to next-to-leading order (NLO)perturbative QCD calculations. The extrapolation of the integrated visible D$^{*\pm}$ cross section to the total charm cross section, based on the Pythia Monte Carlo program, yields $ \sigma ( \epem \rightarrow \epem \ccbar ) _ { <\sqrt{s}>=197\unit{GeV} } = 731 \pm 74_{\mathrm{stat}} \pm 47_{\mathrm{syst}} \pm 157_{\mathrm{extr}} \unit{pb} $.