Parton distributions in radiative corrections to the cross section of electron-proton scattering

Abstract

The structure function approach and the parton picture, developed for the theoretical description of the deep inelastic electron-proton scattering, also proved to be very effective for calculation of radiative corrections in Quantum Electrodynamics. We use them to calculate radiative corrections to the cross section of electron-proton scattering due to electron-photon interaction, in the experimental setup with the recoil proton detection, proposed by A. A. Vorobyev to measure the proton radius. In the one-loop approximation, explicit expressions for these corrections are obtained for arbitrary momentum transfers. It is shown that, at momentum transfers small compared with the proton mass, various contributions to the corrections mutually cancel each other with power accuracy. In two loops, the corrections are obtained in the leading logarithmic approximation.