Measurement of the Structure of the Proton at HERA

TL;DR

This paper combines H1 and ZEUS data to refine the proton's parton density models, presents high-Q^2 scattering results, and reports the first direct measurements of the longitudinal structure function F_L.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive combined analysis of HERA data, improving constraints on proton structure and presenting the first direct F_L measurements.

Findings

Refined parton density functions of the proton.

High-Q^2 neutral current cross section measurements.

First direct measurement of the longitudinal structure function F_L.

Abstract

A combination of the reduced $e^{\pm}p$ cross section, previously measured by H1 and ZEUS, has been performed and leads to well constrained QCD fits of the parton densities in the proton. These results, as well as the high-$Q^2$ neutral current deep inelastic scattering cross sections are presented. First direct measurements of the longitudinal structure function $F_L$ are also reported.