INELASTIC J/PSI PRODUCTION IN DEEP INELASTIC-SCATTERING FROM HYDROGEN AND DEUTERIUM AND THE GLUON DISTRIBUTION OF FREE NUCLEONS

We present results on inelastic J/PSI-production from muon interactions with hydrogen and deuterium at an incident muon energy of 280 GeV. The measured cross section ratio per nucleon for muon-induced J/PSI-production in deuterium and hydrogen was found to be R(D2/H2) = 1.01 +/- 0.15. The colour singlet model is shown to provide a good description of the observed differential cross section apart from a normalisation factor. The comparison between the observed cross section and the colour singlet model prediction allows the extraction of the gluon structure function G(chi) of the nucleon. The momentum fraction-chi of the nucleon carried by the gluon is measured in the range of chi = [0.02, 0.30]. The normalised gluon distribution of free nucleons thus found can be parametrised as chi-G(chi) = 1/2 (eta + 1)(1 - chi)eta, with eta = 5.1 +/- 0.9 (stat).