The structure of real and virtual photons has been studied in electron-proton scattering processes producing di-jet events at HERA by the H1 and ZEUS collaborations. Data have been compared to next-to-leading order QCD calculations and to the predictions of Monte Carlo generators based on the DGLAP and CCFM formalisms for describing the parton dynamics
Measurements sensitive to the structure of both real and virtual photons are presented and compared to theoretical models with various photon parton distribution functions (PDFs). Measurements for real photons show a tendency for the available photon PDFs to be too small to describe the data. For virtual photons, the photon PDF is seen to decrease with increasing photon virtuality. In order to describe the data, resolved photon processes are required up to a photon virtuality of at least 4.5 GeV^2.
We calculate timelike virtual Compton scattering amplitudes in the generalized Bjorken scaling regime and focus on a new polarization asymmetry in the scattering process with a linearly polarized photon beam in the medium energy range, which will be studied intensely at JLab12 experiments. We demonstrate that new observables help us to access the polarized quark and gluon generalized parton distributions $tilde H(x, xi, t)$ and $ tilde E(x, xi, t)$.
The local coupling of two photons to the fundamental quark currents of a hadron gives an energy-independent contribution to the Compton amplitude proportional to the charge squared of the struck quark, a contribution which has no analog in hadron scattering reactions. We show that this local contribution has a real phase and is universal, giving the same contribution for real or virtual Compton scattering for any photon virtuality and skewness at fixed momentum transfer squared t. The t-dependence of this J=0 fixed Regge pole is parameterized by a yet unmeasured even charge-conjugation form factor of the target nucleon. The t=0 limit gives an important constraint on the dependence of the nucleon mass on the quark mass through the Weisberger relation. We discuss how this 1/x form factor can be extracted from high energy deeply virtual Compton scattering and examine predictions given by models of the H generalized parton distribution.
We investigated top quark effects on virtual photon structure functions by pQCD. We include the top quark mass effects on the virtual photon structure function with the quark parton model and with the operator product expansion up to the next-to-leading order in QCD. We also consider the threshold effect on the running coupling constant in the calculation to the effective photon structure function with a matching condition. The numerical calculations are investigated in the kinematical region expected at the future international linear collider.
We investigate the one-gluon-exchange ($alpha alpha_s$) corrections to the real photon structure functions $W_{TT} $, $W_{LT}$, $W_{TT}^{a} $ and $W_{TT}^tau$ in the massive parton model. We employ a technique based on the Cutkosky rules and the reduction of Feynman integrals to master integrals. We show that a positivity constraint, which is derived from the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, is satisfied among the unpolarized and polarized structure functions $W_{TT}$, $W_{TT}^a$ and $W_{TT}^tau$ calculated up to the next-to-leading order in QCD.