A combination is presented of the inclusive deep inelastic cross sections measured by the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations in neutral and charged current unpolarised e ± p scattering at HERA during the period 1994-2000. The data span six orders of magnitude in negative four-momentum-transfer squared, Q 2 , and in Bjorken x. The combination method used takes the correlations of systematic uncertainties into account, resulting in an improved accuracy. The combined data are the sole input in a NLO QCD analysis which determines a new set of parton distributions, HERAPDF1.0, with small experimental uncertainties. This set includes an estimate of the model and parametrisation uncertainties of the fit result.

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Next-to-leading-order QCD analyses of the ZEUS data on deep inelastic scattering together with fixed-target data have been performed, from which the gluon and quark densities of the proton and the value of the strong coupling constant ␣ s (M Z ) were extracted. The study includes a full treatment of the experimental systematic uncertainties including point-to-point correlations. The resulting uncertainties in the parton density functions are presented. A combined fit for ␣ s (M Z ) and the gluon and quark densities yields a value for ␣ s (M Z ) in agreement with the world average. The parton density functions derived from ZEUS data alone indicate the importance of HERA data in determining the sea quark and gluon distributions at low x. The limits of applicability of the theoretical formalism have been explored by comparing the fit predictions to ZEUS data at very low Q 2 .

Measurements of open charm production cross sections in deep-inelastic ep scattering at HERA from the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations are combined. Reduced cross sections σ cc red for charm production are obtained in the kinematic range of photon virtuality 2.5 ≤ Q 2 ≤ 2000 GeV 2 and Bjorken scaling variable 3 · 10 −5 ≤ x ≤ 5 · 10 −2 . The combination method accounts for the correlations of the systematic uncertainties among the different data sets. The combined charm data together with the combined inclusive a e-mail: levy@alzt. deep-inelastic scattering cross sections from HERA are used as input for a detailed NLO QCD analysis to study the influence of different heavy flavour schemes on the parton distribution functions. The optimal values of the charm mass as a parameter in these different schemes are obtained. The implications on the NLO predictions for W ± and Z production cross sections at the LHC are investigated. Using the fixed flavour number scheme, the running mass of the charm quark is determined.