Interpreting virtual photon interactions in terms of parton distribution functions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that parton distribution functions effectively describe virtual photon interactions in high-energy processes, providing a useful phenomenological framework for analyzing photon structure in various collision scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces the application of parton distribution functions to highly virtual photons and illustrates this approach with leading and next-to-leading order QCD calculations.

Findings

Parton distribution functions are useful for describing virtual photon interactions.

Leading order expressions for photon structure functions are provided.

Next-to-leading order QCD calculations support the phenomenological approach.

Abstract

Interactions of virtual photons are analyzed in terms of photon structure. It is argued that the concept of parton distribution functions is phenomenologically very useful even for highly virtual photons involved in hard collisions. This claim is illustrated on leading order expressions for $F_2^{\gamma}(x,P^2,Q^2)$ and effective parton distribution function $D_{\mathrm eff}(x,P^2,Q^2)$ relevant for jet production, as well as within the next-to-leading order QCD calculations of jet cross-sections in electron-proton collisions.