One of the physics goals of the COMPASS experiment at CERN was
to measure the contribution of gluons to the nucleon spin. To achieve
this, it was proposed to scatter polarized \Value{160}{GeV/c} muons on a
polarized deuteron target and to detect D mesons in the final state.
The underlying process in this D meson production
is supposed to be the \Gls{PGF}, where
a virtual photon emitted by the muon interacts
with a gluon from the target nucleon, producing a charm-anticharm quark pair.
Fragmentation of a charm (anticharm) quark leads with high probability to the creation of
a \DZ or D∗ meson, which COMPASS detects via
the D0→Kπ and D∗→D0π→Kππ decay modes.
From the longitudinal cross section spin asymmetries of the D meson production and theoretical
predictions for the \Gls{PGF} cross section, the gluon contribution to the nucleon spin
has been measured by the COMPASS experiment.
The results presented in the thesis are the following.
Based on data from the year 2004 a total visible cross section of \TotalCrossSection,
for the D∗ meson production, has been measured, with
the error being dominated by systematic effects.
It is validated that the D mesons are indeed produced through
the \Gls{PGF} process, by comparison of measured D meson kinematic distributions
to the ones predicted by a theory (AROMA generator).
A good agreement was found for the distribution shapes,
which confirms that \Gls{PGF} plays a major role.
However, a 20% difference was found in the number of
produced \DZ and \aDZ mesons (and for the D∗+ and D∗− mesons as well)
which is significantly larger than predicted by AROMA.
Kinematic distributions of D0 and D∗ mesons
were compared with the background
and also with the nearby \KTS resonance,
using all longitudinal data taken in 2002-2006.
The particle-antiparticle
asymmetry has been studied as a function of several kinematic variables. The 20% excess
of mesons decaying into K+π− over
mesons decaying into K−π+ was observed for all three mesons.
The behavior of the \DZ/\aDZ (and D∗+/D∗−) asymmetries
as a function
of virtual photon energy suggests that associated production of D∗−Λc+ or D0Λc+
may be responsible for the observed effect.
The longitudinal double spin asymmetries have been studied for the D0, D∗ and \KTS mesons
separately for particle, antiparticle and for the sum of particle and antiparticle.
It was found that the asymmetries extracted for D0 and D∗ mesons
are compatible with zero. A 3-sigma deviation
from zero asymmetry was observed for the \KTS meson. An investigation of the \KTS double spin asymmetry
reveals a dependence as function of the Bjorken xBj variable