Measurement of open beauty production at HERA in the D*μ final state

The production of beautyquarks with a \(D^{\ast\pm}\) and a muonin the final state has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERAusing an integrated luminosity of 114 pb-1. Low transverse-momentum thresholds for the muonand D* mesonallow for a measurement of beautyproduction closer to the production threshold than previous measurements. The beautysignal was extracted using the charge correlations and angular distributions of the muonwith respect to the D* meson. Cross sections for photoproduction and deep inelastic scatteringare somewhat higher than, but compatible with, next-to-leading-order QCD predictions, and compatible with other measurements.