The single jet inclusive cross section in γγ processes at e +e − colliders as a means of measuring the gluon distribution of the photon

Abstract

We examine the possibility of using the single jet inclusive cross section in γγ processes at e +e − colliders such as TRISTAN and LEP in order to get reliable measurements of the parton distributions of the photon and in particular of the gluon distribution. We find that if it is possible to tag the two spectator jet fragments from the two photons, and thereby reliably identifying the double resolved contribution to the cross section, then unambiguous measurement of the gluon content of the photon is possible if, in addition, it is assumed that the quark distributions are reliably known. An O( α s 3) next-to-leading order calculation of this contribution, which is very much less sensitive to renormalisation/factorisation scale uncertainties, is performed which reinforces this conclusion.