We study the $W^+W^-$ and $Z^0Z^0$ electroweak boson production in double parton scattering using QCD evolution equations for double parton distributions. In particular, we analyze the impact of splitting terms in the evolution equations on the doubl
e parton scattering cross sections. Unlike the standard terms, the splitting terms are not suppressed for large values of the relative momentum of two partons in the double parton scattering. Thus, they play an important role which we discuss in detail for the single splitting contribution to the cross sections under the study.
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 rul
es. 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 show that the double diffractive electroweak vector boson production in the $pp$ collisions at the LHC is an ideal probe of QCD based mechanisms of diffraction. Assuming the resolved Pomeron model with flavor symmetric parton distributions, the $W
$ production asymmetry in rapidity equals exactly zero. In other approaches, like the soft color interaction model, in which soft gluon exchanges are responsible for diffraction, the asymmetry is non-zero and equal to that in the inclusive $W$ production. In the same way, the ratio of the $W$ to $Z$ boson production is independent of rapidity in the models with resolved Pomeron in contrast to the predictions of the soft color interaction model.
We analyze the Drell-Yan lepton pair production at forward rapidity at the Large Hadron Collider. Using the dipole framework for the computation of the cross section we find a significant suppression in comparison to the collinear factorization formu
la due to saturation effects in the dipole cross section. We develop a twist expansion in powers of Q_s^2/M^2 where Q_s is the saturation scale and M the invariant mass of the produced lepton pair. For the nominal LHC energy the leading twist description is sufficient down to masses of 6 GeV. Below that value the higher twist terms give a significant contribution.
We analyse diffractive electroweak vector boson production in hadronic collisions and show that the single diffractive W boson production asymmetry in rapidity is a particularly good observable at the LHC to test the concept of the flavour symmetric
pomeron parton distributions. It may also provide an additional constraint for the parton distribution functions in the proton.
We present a short summary of parton saturation concepts as seen in deep inelastic scattering.
We determine diffractive parton distributions of the proton from DGLAP based fits to HERA data including the twist--4 contribution from longitudinal polarized virtual photons, which is known to be important in the region of large beta. The biggest im
pact of this contribution is on the diffractive gluon distribution and on the diffractive longitudinal structure function to be determined from HERA data.
We evaluate Generalized Parton Distributions of the pion in two chiral quark models: the Spectral Quark Model and the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with a Pauli-Villars regularization. We proceed by the evaluation of double distributions through the use o
f a manifestly covariant calculation based on the alpha representation of propagators. As a result polynomiality is incorporated automatically and calculations become simple. In addition, positivity and normalization constraints, sum rules and soft pion theorems are fulfilled. We obtain explicit formulas, holding at the low-energy quark-model scale. The expressions exhibit no factorization in the t-dependence. The QCD evolution of those parton distributions is carried out to experimentally or lattice accessible scales. We argue for the need of evolution by comparing the Parton Distribution Function and the Parton Distribution Amplitude of the pion to the available experimental and lattice data, and confirm that the quark-model scale is low, about 320 MeV.
We make predictions for the diffractive longitudinal structure function F_L^D to be measured at HERA, based on DGLAP fits of diffractive parton distributions with twist--4 contribution. This contribution describes diffractive qqbar production from lo
ngitudinal photons and significantly changes predictions for F_L^D obtained in pure DGLAP analyses.
