Comment on "Difference betweene+ande−deep-inelastic scattering"

Abstract

On the basis of a parton model, Fishbane and Kingsley have investigated the difference between ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}}p$ and ${e}^{+}p$ deep-inelastic scattering in the backward direction and found it to be of relative order $\ensuremath{\alpha}{\mathrm{ln}}^{2}(\frac{{Q}^{2}}{{\ensuremath{\mu}}^{2}})$, where $\ensuremath{\mu}$ is a typical hadronic mass. We have reexamined this problem in the more general kinematic region ${E}_{1}\ensuremath{\gg}{E}_{3}$ (${E}_{1}$ and ${E}_{3}$ are the initial and final electron energies, respectively) and have taken care to distinguish between hard- and soft-photon radiative corrections. The noninfrared part of the virtual photon correction has been found to be of relative order $\ensuremath{\alpha}{\mathrm{ln}}^{2}(\frac{{E}_{1}}{{E}_{3}})$. It is hard to conceive of a situation where such a contribution to the cross section would be observable.