Measurement of open beauty production at HERA

The first observation of open b production in ep collisions is reported. An event sample containing muons and jets has been selected which is enriched in semileptonic b quark decays. The visible cross section σ(ep→bb̄X→μX′)for Q2<1GeV2, 0.12.0GeV in the laboratory frame. The expected visible cross section based on a NLO QCD calculation is 0.104±0.017nb. The cross sections for electroproduction with Q2<1GeV2 and photoproduction are derived from the data and found to be σ(ep→ebb̄X)=7.1±0.6(stat.)+1.5−1.3(syst.)nb and σ(γp→bb̄X)=111±10(stat.)+23−20(syst.)nb at an average 〈Wγp〉∼180GeV, respectively.