Proton structure functions at HERA

Abstract

The electron-proton collider HERA, like an electron-mycroscope, explores the structure of the proton down to 10−16 cm and up to the situation of very high parton densities. The proton energy was upgraded from 820 to 920 GeV in the Fall of ’98 and the luminosity has also substantially improved, with another factor of 3 upgrade expected to follow this year. Inclusive proton structure functions have been studied with incident e+ and e− of 27 GeV in the neutral (NC) and charged (CC) current interactions as functions of the squared four-momentum transfer, Q2, and of the fractional proton momentum carried by partons, x. The structure function F2, as well as the γ−Z0 interference term xF3, have been measured in a range of Q2 and 1/x that extends by orders of magnitude that reached by fixed target experiments. The DGLAP evolution equations [1] allow for a perturbative NLO QCD fit of the measured non-perturbative structure functions in the available kinematic range: αS and the gluon density at low x are fitted at ...