Production of Charmed Mesons In Z Decays

The production of charmed mesons $$\mathop {D^0 }\limits^{( - )} $$ ,D ± , andD *± is studied in a sample of 478,000 hadronicZ decays. The production rates are measured to be $$\begin{gathered} \frac{{\Gamma ({\rm Z} \to D^{* \pm } X)}}{{\Gamma _{had} }} = 0.187 \pm 0.015(\exp .) \pm 0.013(BR), \hfill \\ \frac{{\Gamma ({\rm Z} \to D^ \pm X)}}{{\Gamma _{had} }} = 0.251 \pm 0.026(\exp .) \pm 0.025(BR), \hfill \\ \frac{{\Gamma ({\rm Z} \to \mathop {D^0 }\limits^{( - )} X)}}{{\Gamma _{had} }} = 0.518 \pm 0.052(\exp .) \pm 0.035(BR), \hfill \\ \end{gathered} $$ where the errors from this analysis are separated from those coming from theD branching ratios (BR). TheD *± momentum distribution is ex…