Scaling violations of the proton structure function F2 at small x

Abstract

An analysis is presented of scaling violations of the proton structure function F 2( x, Q 2) measured with the H1 detector at HERA in the range of Bjorken x values between x = 3 × 10 −4 and 10 −2 for four-momentum transfers Q> 2 larger than 8.7 GeV 2. The structure function F 2( x, Q 2) is observed to rise linearly with ln Q 2. Under the assumption that the observed scaling violations at small x ⩽ 0.01 are described correctly by perturbative QCD, an estimate is obtained of the gluon distribution function G( x, Q 0 2) at Q 2 2 = 20 GeV 2.