The Total and Jet Photoproduction Cross Sections at HERA and Fermilab

Abstract

We present results of calculations of the total and jet photoproduction cross sections at HERA and Fermilab energies$^1$. The calculations take into account the high-energy QCD structure of the photon and are performed for different photon structure functions. We discuss how recent measurements of the total photoproduction cross section at HERA energies$^2$ can provide an important information on the low $x$ behavior of the photon structure function and in a more general context, to the nature of strong interactions. In addition, we show that the photoproduction cross section measurements at Fermilab E683 energies could provide a firmer value for $p_{T}^{min}$, the lower bound on the transverse momentum of outgoing jets, which signals the onset of hard scattering. The extrapolation of our cross section to ultra-high energies, of relevance to the cosmic ray physics, gives significant contribution to the ``conventional'' value, but cannot account for the anomalous muon content observed in the cosmic ray air-showers associated with astrophysical point sources$^4$.