No Arabic abstract
We report on the first calculation of the structure function g_1 in polarised deep-inelastic scattering to the third order in massless perturbative QCD. The calculation follows the dispersive approach already used for the corresponding unpolarised cases of F_2,L, but additionally involves higher tensor integrals and the Dirac matrix gamma_5 in D unequal 4 dimensions. Our results confirm all known two-loop expressions including the coefficient functions of Zijlstra and van Neerven not independently verified before. At three loops we extract the helicity-difference next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) quark-quark and gluon-quark splitting functions Delta P_qq and Delta P_qg. The results exhibit interesting features concerning sum rules and the momentum-fraction limits x to 1 and x to 0.
We present a new set of parton distributions obtained at NNLO. These differ from the previous sets available at NNLO due to improvements in the theoretical treatment. In particular we include a full treatment of heavy flavours in the region near the quark mass. In this way, an essentially complete set of NNLO partons is presented for the first time. The improved treatment leads to a significant change in the gluon and heavy quark distributions, and a larger value of the QCD coupling at NNLO, alpha_S(M_Z^2) = 0.1191 +/- 0.002(expt.) +/- 0.003(theory). Indirectly this also leads to a change in the light partons at small x and modifications of our predictions for W and Z production at the LHC. As well as the best-fit set of partons, we also provide 30 additional sets representing the uncertainties of the partons obtained using the Hessian approach.
We present a systematic investigation of jet production at hadron colliders from a phenomenological point of view, with the dual aim of providing a validation of theoretical calculations and guidance to future determinations of parton distributions (PDFs). We account for all available inclusive jet and dijet production measurements from ATLAS and CMS at 7 and 8 TeV by including them in a global PDF determination, and comparing to theoretical predictions at NNLO QCD supplemented by electroweak (EW) corrections. We assess the compatibility of the PDFs, specifically the gluon, obtained before and after inclusion of the jet data. We compare the single-inclusive jet and dijet observables in terms of perturbative behaviour upon inclusion of QCD and EW corrections, impact on the PDFs, and global fit quality. In the single-inclusive case, we also investigate the role played by different scale choices and the stability of the results upon changes in modelling of the correlated experimental systematics.
Double parton distribution functions (DPDFs) are used in the QCD description of double parton scattering. The DPDFs evolve with hard scales through relatively new QCD evolution equations which obey nontrivial momentum and valence quark number sum rules. Based on the constructed numerical program, we present results on the QCD evolution of the DPDFs. In particular, we discuss the problem how to specify initial conditions for the evolution equations which exactly fulfill the sum rules.
We provide an assessment of the state of the art in various issues related to experimental measurements, phenomenological methods and theoretical results relevant for the determination of parton distribution functions (PDFs) and their uncertainties, with the specific aim of providing benchmarks of different existing approaches and results in view of their application to physics at the LHC. We discuss higher order corrections, we review and compare different approaches to small x resummation, and we assess the possible relevance of parton saturation in the determination of PDFS at HERA and its possible study in LHC processes. We provide various benchmarks of PDF fits, with the specific aim of studying issues of error propagation, non-gaussian uncertainties, choice of functional forms of PDFs, and combination of data from different experiments and different processes. We study the impact of combined HERA (ZEUS-H1) structure function data, their impact on PDF uncertainties, and their implications for the computation of standard candle processes, and we review the recent F_L determination at HERA. Finally, we compare and assess methods for luminosity measurements at the LHC and the impact of PDFs on them.
It has been revealed from the path-integral formulation of the hadronic tensor that there are connected sea and disconnected sea partons. The former is responsible for the Gottfried sum rule violation primarily and evolves the same way as the valence. Therefore, the DGLAP evolution equations can be extended to accommodate them separately. We discuss its consequences and implications vis-a-vis lattice calculations.