Contribution of the Hadronic Component of the Photon to Charm Production at the HERA Accelerator

The contribution to the cross section for D*-meson photoproduction at the HERA accelerator from the scattering of the virtual $$c\bar c$$ vector mesons in the content of the photon on a proton is estimated within the vector-dominance model. It is shown that this mechanism plays an important role throughout the range of D*-meson transverse momenta available at the HERA facility and that its inclusion significantly improves a theoretical description of the experimental differential distributions.