arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A. J. Askew.
We calculate the rate for the deep-inelastic electroproduction of dijets at HERA. We study the weakening of the azimuthal (back-to-back) correlation between the jets, as $x$ decreases, to see whether it can be used to identify BFKL dynamics from conventional fixed-order QCD effects. We show how this may give information on the transverse momentum ($k_T)$ dependence of the gluon distribution of the proton.
We critically examine the QCD predictions for the $Q^2$ dependence of the electron-proton deep-inelastic structure function $F_2(x,Q^2)$ in the small $x$ region, which is being probed at HERA. The standard results based on next-to-leading order Altarelli-Parisi evolution are compared with those that follow from the BFKL equation, which corresponds to the resummation of the leading log$(1/x)$ terms. The effects of parton screening are also quantified. The theoretical predictions are confronted with each other, and with existing data from HERA. (3 Postscript figures included).
The general properties of the Lipatov or BFKL equation are reviewed. Modifications to the infrared region are proposed. Numerical predictions for the deep-inelastic electron-proton structure functions at small $x$ are presented and confronted with recent HERA measurements.