Evidence for the High-Energy Photoproduction of Charmed Mesons

Abstract

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