Observation of Events with an Energetic Forward Neutron in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

In deep inelastic neutral current scattering of positrons and protons at the center of mass energy of 300 GeV, we observe, with the ZEUS detector, events with a high energy neutron produced at very small scattering angles with respect to the proton direction. The events constitute a fixed fraction of the deep inelastic, neutral current event sample independent of Bjorken x and Q2 in the range 3 · 10-4 \u3c xBJ \u3c 6 · 10-3 and 10 \u3c Q2 \u3c 100 GeV2

Measurement of the reaction gamma* p --> phi p in deep inelastic e+ p scattering at HERA

The production of $\phi$ mesons in the reaction $e^{+}p \rightarrow e^{+} \phi p$ ($\phi \rightarrow K^{+}K^{-}$), for $7 < Q^2 < 25$ GeV$^2$ and for virtual photon-proton centre of mass energies ($W$) in the range 42-134 GeV, has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA. When compared to lower energy data at similar $Q^2$, the results show that the \gamma^*p \rightarrow \phid p cross section rises strongly with $W$. This behaviour is similar to that previously found for the $\gamma^*p \rightarrow \rho^0 p$ cross section. This strong dependence cannot be explained by production through soft pomeron exchange. It is, however, consistent with perturbative QCD expectations, where it reflects the rise of the gluon momentum density in the proton at small $x$. The ratio of $\sigma (\phi) / \sigma (\rho^0)$, which has previously been determined by ZEUS to be 0.065 $\pm$ 0.013 (stat.) in photoproduction at a mean $W$ of 70 GeV, is measured to be 0.18 $\pm$ 0.05 (stat.) $\pm$ 0.03 (syst.) at a mean $Q^2$ of 12.3 GeV$^2$ and mean $W$ of $\approx$ 100 GeV and is thus approaching at large $Q^2$ the value of 2/9 predicted from the quark charges of the vector mesons and a flavour independent production mechanism.Comment: 22 pages, including 4 figures. Includes some minor editorial change

Dijet angular distributions in direct and resolved photoproduction at HERA

Jet photoproduction, where the two highest transverse energy (\ETJ) jets have \ETJ above 6 GeV and a jet-jet invariant mass above 23~GeV, has been studied with the ZEUS detector at the HERA $ep$ collider. Resolved and direct photoproduction samples have been separated. The cross section as a function of the angle between the jet-jet axis and the beam direction in the dijet rest frame has been measured for the two samples. The measured angular distributions differ markedly from each other. They agree with the predictions of QCD calculations, where the different angular distributions reflect the different spins of the quark and gluon exchanged in the hard subprocess.Comment: 20 pages including 4 figure