Elementary Particles and Fields and String Theory Commons^™

What Are The Low-Q And Large-X Boundaries Of Collinear Qcd Factorization Theorems?, E. Moffat, W. Melnitchouk, T. C. Rogers, N. Sato

Physics Faculty Publications

Familiar factorized descriptions of classic QCD processes such as deeply inelastic scattering (DIS) apply in the limit of very large hard scales, much larger than nonperturbative mass scales and other nonperturbative physical properties like intrinsic transverse momentum. Since many interesting DIS studies occur at kinematic regions where the hard scale, Q ∼ 1-2 GeV, is not very much greater than the hadron masses involved, and the Bjorken scaling variable x_bj is large, x_bj ≳ 0.5, it is important to examine the boundaries of the most basic factorization assumptions and assess whether improved starting points are needed. Using an …