A study of D∗±-production in Z0 decays

In this paper an investigation of the production of D∗± mesons produced in e+e− collisions at energies around the Z0 pole is presented. Based on 115 D∗± mesons with xD∗  2ED∗/Ecm > 0.2 the properties of D∗ mesons produced in the reaction Z0 → cc are studied. Fixing the yield and the fragmentation function of bottom quarks to the values obtained at LEP using lepton tags, and average energy fraction of the D∗± mesons from primary charmed quarks of 〈xc→D∗〉 = 0.52 ± 0.03 +- 0.01 is found and Γz0→cc = (323 ± 61 ± 35) MeV is determined. The first error is the combined statistical and systematic error from this experiment, and the second the total error from other sources.