Evidence for the High-Energy Photoproduction of Charmed Mesons

Abstract

We report on a search for the photoproduction of ${D}^{0}({\overline{D}}^{0})$ mesons in events which have zero total visible strangeness. We observe an enhancement of 94\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}19 events in the ${K}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{\mp}}$ decay mode, corresponding to a cross section of \ensuremath{\sim}720 nb assuming a branching ratio of 0.018.