Factorized QED and QCD Contribution to Deeply Inelastic Scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel joint QED and QCD factorization method for calculating NLO contributions to deep inelastic scattering, improving the precision of partonic structure extraction.

Contribution

It presents the first NLO factorized QED and QCD calculations for DIS, treating all charged particles equally and ensuring infrared safety without additional parameters.

Findings

QED contributions are fully factorized and infrared safe.

The approach allows parameter-free calculations similar to QCD.

Potential to refine parton distribution functions from DIS data.

Abstract

We present the first calculation of next-to-leading order (NLO) factorized QED and QCD contributions to the short-distance hard coefficients of inclusive lepton-hadron deep inelastic scattering (DIS) in a joint QED and QCD factorization approach. Unlike the traditional radiative correction approach to handle the collision-induced QED contributions to DIS, QED radiation from all charged leptons and quarks are treated equally, and their collinear sensitivities are systematically factorized into corresponding universal lepton and parton distribution functions. We demonstrate that the NLO factorized QED contribution is completely infrared safe and calculable without the need of any parameters other than the standard factorization scale in the same way as the factorized QCD contribution. We discuss the potential impact of this joint factorization approach on the extraction of partonic information from lepton-hadron DIS.