NLO QCD ANALYSIS OF POLARIZED DEEP INELASTIC SCATTERING

Abstract

We have carried out a next-to-leading order QCD analysis of the experimental data on polarized DIS in the [Formula: see text] scheme. We have studied two models of the parametrizations of the input parton densities — the first due to Brodsky, Burkhardt and Schmidt (BBS), which gives a simultaneous parametrization for the polarized and unpolarized densities and in which the counting rules are strictly imposed; in the second, the input polarized densities are written in terms of the unpolarized ones in the generic form Δq(x)=f(x)q(x), with f(x) some simple smooth function. In both cases a good fit to the polarized data is achieved. As expected, the polarized data do not allow a precise determination of the polarized gluon density. Concerning the polarized sea quark densities, these are fairly well determined in the BBS model because of the interplay of polarized and unpolarized data, whereas in the second model, where only the polarized data are relevant, the polarized sea quark densities are largely undetermined.