The role of resolved virtual photons in the production of forward jets at HERA

TL;DR

This paper investigates how resolved virtual photon processes influence forward jet production at HERA, demonstrating that DGLAP evolution can explain observed data without invoking BFKL dynamics.

Contribution

It shows that including resolved photon processes with DGLAP evolution suffices to describe forward jet data at HERA, challenging the necessity of BFKL-based explanations.

Findings

Resolved photon processes significantly impact forward jet cross sections.

DGLAP evolution chains can account for observed effects without BFKL dynamics.

The data can be explained without invoking new small x parton dynamics.

Abstract

The measurement of forward jet cross sections has been suggested as a promising probe of new small x parton dynamics and the question is whether the new HERA data provide an indication of this. In this paper the influence of resolved photon processes has been investigated and it has been studied to what extent the inclusion of such processes in addition to normal deep inelastic scattering leads to agreement with data. It is shown that two DGLAP evolution chains from the hard scattering process towards the proton and the photon respectively, are sufficient to describe effects observed in the HERA data, which have been attributed to BFKL dynamics.