Measurement of diffractive production of D*+-(2010) mesons in deep inelastic scattering at HERA

Diffractive production of D*+-(2010) mesons in deep inelastic scattering has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 44.3 pb-1. Diffractive charm production is identified by the presence of a large rapidity gap in the final state of events in which a D*+-(2010) meson is reconstructed in the decay channel D*+ -> (D0 -> K-pi+) pi+ (+ charge conjugate). Differential cross sections when compared with theoretical predictions indicate the importance of gluons in such diffractive interactions

Measurement of subjet multiplicities in neutral current deep inelastic scattering at HERA and determination of αs\alpha_s

The subjet multiplicity has been measured in neutral current e+p interactions at Q**2 > 125 GeV**2 with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 38.6 pb-1. Jets were identified in the laboratory frame using the longitudinally invariant K_T cluster algorithm. The number of jet-like substructures within jets, known as the subjet multiplicity, is defined as the number of clusters resolved in a jet by reapplying the jet algorithm at a smaller resolution scale y_cut. Measurements of the mean subjet multiplicity, < n_sbj >, for jets with transverse energies E_T,jet >15 GeV are presented. Next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations describe the measurements well. The value of alpha_s(M_Z), determined from < n_sbj > at y_cut=10**-2 for jets with 25 < E_T,jet < 71 GeV, is alpha_s (M_Z) = 0.1187 +/- 0.0017 (stat.) +0.0024 / -0.0009 (syst.) +0.0093 / -0.0076 (th.)

Search for lepton-flavor violation in e+p collisions at HERA

A search has been made for lepton-flavor-violating interactions, e+ p -> mu/tau X, at a center-of-mass energy of 300 GeV with an integrated luminosity of 47.7 pb^-1 using the ZEUS detector at HERA. No evidence was found for lepton-flavor violation and constraints were derived on leptoquarks that could mediate such interactions. Some of the constraints are also applicable to lepton-flavor-violating processes mediated by squarks in R-parity-violating supersymmetric models. In some cases involving heavy quarks and especially for the tau channel, the ZEUS constraints are the most stringent published to date