Measurement of high-Q^2 e^-p neutral current cross sections at HERA and the extraction of xF_3

TL;DR

This paper reports precise measurements of e^-p neutral current deep inelastic scattering cross sections at high Q^2, and extracts the structure function xF_3, confirming Standard Model predictions at HERA.

Contribution

It provides new high-Q^2 cross section data and extracts the xF_3 structure function by combining e^-p and e^+p results, enhancing understanding of Z-boson exchange effects.

Findings

Results agree with Standard Model predictions.

First extraction of xF_3 at high Q^2 from combined e^-p and e^+p data.

Detailed differential cross sections measured over a wide kinematic range.

Abstract

Cross sections for e^-p neutral current deep inelastic scattering have been measured at a centre-of-mass energy of 318 GeV using an integrated luminosity of 15.9 pb^-1 collected with the ZEUS detector at HERA. Results on the double-differential cross-section d^2s/dxdQ^2 in the range 185 < Q^2 < 50000 GeV^2 and 0.0037 < x < 0.75, as well as the single-differential cross-sections ds/dQ^2, ds/dx and ds/dy for Q^2 > 200 GeV^2, are presented. To study the effect of Z-boson exchange, ds/dx has also been measured for Q^2 > 10000 GeV^2. The structure function xF_3 has been extracted by combining the e^-p results presented here with the recent ZEUS measurements of e^+p neutral current deep inelastic scattering. All results agree well with the predictions of the Standard Model.