Phenomenology of Forward Hadrons in DIS: Fracture Functions and its Q2 Evolution

DANIEL DE FLORIAN; RODOLFO SASSOT

PHYSICAL REVIEW D - PARTICLE AND FILDS

American Physical Society

Año: 1997 vol. 56 p. 426 - 432

0556-2821

We analyze recent data on the production of forward neutrons in deep inelastic scattering at DESY HERA in the framework of a perturbative QCD description for semi-inclusive processes, which includes fracture functions. Using a model estimate for the nonperturbative piece of the fragmentation process, in fairly good agreement with the available data, we analyze the Q2 dependence of the resulting fracture functions, which is driven by nonhomogeneous evolution equations. We also propose a measurement of the pion production cross section in the target fragmentation region as a new test of perturbative QCD, which in this case predicts also a different Q2 evolution with respect to the one given by the usual Altarelli-Parisi equations.