QUANTUM CHROMODYNAMICS AT HIGH ENERGIES AT HERA

Abstract

HERA is the world's only accelerator to study inelastic electron-proton scattering at the energy frontier which uniquely allows the partonic structure of the proton and the theory of strong interactions, QCD, to be deeply explored. A review is given here of recent results from the HERA ep collider experiments H1 and ZEUS and the fixed target eN spin experiment HERMES as was presented to the 32nd Rochester conference at Beijing in summer 2004. The summary comprises new results on the quark and gluon structure of the proton, on the strong coupling constant αs, on the production of charm and beauty particles and on hard diffractive scattering. New ideas and developments in HERA physics are presented as are the first measurements with the upgraded polarised ep collider.