The curvature of $F_2^p(x,Q^2)$ as a probe of the range of validity of perturbative QCD evolutions in the small-$x$ region

Abstract

Perturbative NLO and NNLO QCD evolutions of parton distributions are studied, in particular in the (very) small-$x$ region, where they are in very good agreement with all recent precision measurements of $F_2^p(x,Q^2)$. These predictions turn out to be also rather insensitive to the specific choice of the factorization scheme ($\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ or DIS). A characteristic feature of perturbative QCD evolutions is a {\em{positive}} curvature of $F_2^p$ which increases as $x$ decreases. This perturbatively stable prediction provides a sensitive test of the range of validity of perturbative QCD.

17 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables; minor corrections, to appear in EPJC

References in corpus (1)

• Non-singlet QCD analysis of F_2(x,Q^2) up to NNLO

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Dynamical parton distributions of the nucleon and very small-x physics
• Analytic Expression for the Joint x and Q^2 Dependences of the Structure Functions of Deep Inelastic Scattering
• NNLO QCD contributions to the flavor non-singlet sector of ${\mathbf{F}}_2(\mathbf{x},{\mathbf{Q}}^2)$
• Extracting the longitudinal structure function FL(x,Q2) at small x from a Froissart-bounded parametrization of F2(x,Q2)
• Dynamical next-to-next-to-leading order parton distributions and the perturbative stability of F_L(x,Q^2)