The Gluon Density of the Proton at Low $x$ from a QCD Analysis of $F_2$

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the proton's gluon density at low Bjorken-x using QCD fits to structure function data from HERA and fixed target experiments, revealing a steep rise in gluon density as x decreases.

Contribution

It provides a detailed QCD analysis of $F_2$ data to extract the gluon density at low x, combining HERA and fixed target measurements for improved accuracy.

Findings

Gluon density rises steeply with decreasing x.

Consistent with QCD evolution equations.

Enhanced understanding of proton structure at low x.

Abstract

We present a QCD analysis of the proton structure function $F_2$ measured by the H1 experiment at HERA, combined with data from previous fixed target experiments. The gluon density is extracted from the scaling violations of $F_2$ in the range $2\cdot 10^{-4}<x<3\cdot 10^{-2}$ and compared with an approximate solution of the QCD evolution equations. The gluon density is found to rise steeply with decreasing $x$.