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

The inclusive production of D*/sup +or-/ mesons in two-photon collisions is measured with the ALEPH detector at e/sup +/e- centre- of-mass energies from 183 GeV to 209 GeV. A total of 360 +or- 27 D*+or- meson events are observed from an integrated luminosity of 699 pb/sup -1/. Contributions from direct and single-resolved processes are separated using the ratio of the transverse momentum p/sub t//sup D*+or-/ of the D*/sup +or-/ to the visible invariant mass W/sub vis/ of the event. Differential cross sections of D*+or- production as functions of p/sub t//sup D*+or-/ and the pseudorapidity ¿ eta D*/sup +or-/¿ are measured in the range 2 GeV/c < p/sub t//sup D*+or-/ < 12 GeV/c and ¿ eta D*/sup +or-/¿ < 1.5. They are compared to next-to- leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD calculations. The extrapolation of the integrated visible D*/sup +or-/ cross section to the total charm cross section, based on the Pythia Monte Carlo program, yields sigma (e/sup +/e- to e/sup +/e-cc)/sub < square root s>=197 GeV/ = 731 +or- 74/sub stat/ +or- 47/sub Syst/ +or- 157/sub extr/ pb. (21 refs).