Gonçalves V P, Machado M V T
Instituto de Física e Matemática, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Caixa Postal 354, CEP 96010-090, Pelotas, RS, Brazil.
Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Nov 14;91(20):202002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.202002.
We show that the cross section for inclusive charm production exhibits geometric scaling in a large range of photon virtualities. In the DESY ep collider HERA kinematic domain the saturation momentum Q(2)(sat)(x) stays below the hard scale micro(2)(c)=4m(2)(c), implying charm production probing mostly the color transparency regime and unitarization effects being almost negligible. We derive our results considering two saturation models which are able to describe the HERA data for the proton structure function at small values of the Bjorken variable x. A striking feature is the scaling on tau identical with Q(2)/Q(2)(sat)(x) above te saturation limit, corroborating recent theoretical studies.