Nonlinear corrections to the single differential cross section for neutral current e−p scattering in the NLO approximation

Abstract

We present the effects of nonlinear corrections to the single differential cross section d\sigma/dQ^2 and the reduced cross section \sigma_r (x,Q^2) for the neutral current (NC) e-p scattering at the leading order (LO) and the next-to-leading order (NLO) approximations in perturbative quantum chromo dynamics (QCD). Technically, based on the double Laplace transform method, we first derive the effects of the nonlinear corrections to the proton structure functions F2(x,Q^2) and FL(x,Q^2) and consequently obtain the corresponding single differential and reduced cross sections. Our results clearly indicate the consistency of the nonlinear behavior of the quark and gluon distributions at low x values. Our numerical results ( obtained in a range of the virtuality 8.5 < Q2 < 5000 GeV ^2 and the Bjorken scale 10^(-5)< x < 1) show that the effects of these nonlinear corrections to the proton structure functions are more noticeable at x < 0.001 and, to some extent, control the incremental trend of these functions at low x values. Moreover, a comparison of our numerical results of the single differential and reduced cross sections at the NLO approximations with those of H1 collaboration data shows that the nonlinear corrections increase the accuracy of calculations rather than the linear calculations at low to moderate Q^2 values for low x values.