Abstract submitted to the
         International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics
                  July 12 - 18, 2001, Budapest, Hungary
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               Measurement of D^{*\pm} diffractive cross sections
                           in photoproduction at HERA

                    
                               ZEUS Collaboration



                                    Abstract


      The first measurement of D^{*\pm} meson diffractive photoproduction 
      cross sections has been performed with the ZEUS detector at the HERA 
      ep collider, using an integrated luminosity of 38 pb^{-1}. The 
      measurement has been performed for photon-proton center-of-mass 
      energies in the range 130 < W < 280 GeV and photon virtualities 
      Q^2 < 1 GeV^2. D^{*\pm} mesons have been reconstructed with p_T^{D^*}
      > 2 GeV and -1.5 < eta^{D^*} < 1.5 from the decay channel
      D^{*+} -> D^0 pi^+_s with D^0 -> K^- pi^+ (+c.c.). The diffractive
      component has been selected with 0.001 < x_{Pom} < 0.018. The measured 
      cross section in this kinematic range is: sigma (ep -> eD^*Xp) =
      0.74 \pm 0.21 (stat.)^{+0.27}_{-0.18} (syst.) \pm 0.16 (p. diss.) nb.
      Measured integrated and differential cross sections have been compared 
      to theoretical expectations.