2023/12/20 by P. Duwentäster, Duwentäster, Pit, V. Guzey +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2312.12993
openalex publication_date 2023/12/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We present numerical studies of the leading non-linear corrections to the Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi evolution equations of parton distribution functions (PDFs) resulting from gluon recombination. The effect of these corrections is to reduce the pace of evolution at small momentum fractions x, while slightly increasing it at intermediate x. By implementing the non-linear evolution in the xFitter framework, we have carried out fits of proton PDFs using data on lepton-proton deep inelastic scattering from HERA, BCDMS and NMC. While we find no evidence for the presence of non-linearities, they cannot be entirely excluded either and we are able to set limits for their strength. In terms of the recombination scale Qr, which plays a similar role as the saturation scale in the dipole picture of the proton, we find that Qr \lesssim 2.5 \rm GeV. We also quantify the impact of the non-linear terms for the longitudinal structure function at the Electron-Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Electron Collider and find that these measurements could provide stronger constraints on the projected effects.