Leading Proton Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

The semi-inclusive reaction e+p → e+Xp was studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA with an integrated luminosity of 12.8 pb−1. The final-state proton, which was detected with the ZEUS leading proton spectrometer, carried a large fraction of the incoming proton energy, xL > 0.32, and its transverse momentum squared satisfied pT2 < 0.5 GeV2; the exchanged photon virtuality, Q2, was greater than 3 GeV2 and the range of the masses of the photon-proton system was 45 < W < 225 GeV. The leading proton production cross section and rates are presented as a function of xL, pT2, Q2 and the Bjorken scaling variable, x.