Measurements of deep inelastic scattering at HERA

TL;DR

This paper presents the final measurements of deep inelastic scattering cross sections from HERA, providing crucial insights into proton structure, the weak force, and validating the Standard Model through detailed data and parton distribution fits.

Contribution

It reports the comprehensive final data from HERA on deep inelastic scattering, including measurements, comparisons with Standard Model predictions, and parton distribution function fits, advancing understanding of proton structure.

Findings

Validation of the Standard Model predictions

Detailed measurements of proton structure functions

Evidence of the electroweak unification

Abstract

After fifteen years of running and a further five years of analysis, the final inclusive deep inelastic scattering cross sections from H1 and ZEUS have been published. Measurements of neutral current and charged current processes in ep collisions at HERA are presented. These provide us with the most valuable information on the structure of the proton, which tells us about the fundamental structure of matter and is essential for understanding processes at proton colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider. The measurements also demonstrate the chiral structure of the weak force and give a beautiful demonstration of the unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces. The new data will be presented in detail and comparisons with the latest predictions of the Standard Model shown. The H1 and ZEUS collaborations have also performed fits of the parton distribution functions in the proton; the results of these fits will also be presented.