# Direct determination of the gluon density in the proton from jet cross sections in deep-inelastic scattering

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The present knowledge on the gluon density in the proton basically comes from deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) structure function data (i.e. from inclusive DIS cross sections). These are, however, only indirectly sensitive to the gluon density, which enters the cross section formulae only via the next-to-leading order (NLO) corrections in the boson-gluon fusion process.

A process that is directly sensitive to the gluon density in the proton is the production of jets at (moderately) high transverse energies ($`E_T`$) in the Breit frame. At leading order, high $`E_T`$ jet cross sections are described by QCD-Compton and by boson-gluon fusion processes, the latter being dominant over large regions of phase space. A QCD analysis of jet cross sections may therefore lead to a direct determination of the gluon density, independent of assumptions needed in the indirect determinations from structure function data.

## 2 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The dijet and the inclusive jet cross sections presented here have been measured with the H1 detector at HERA, based on data taken in the years 1994-97 corresponding to an integrated luminosity $`_{\mathrm{int}}36\mathrm{pb}^1`$. The kinematic range extends from moderate to large momentum transfers $`10<Q^2<5000\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ for $`0.2<y<0.6`$. Jets are defined by the inclusive $`k_{}`$ algorithm  which is applied to the final state particles in the Breit frame. Only jets in the central region of the detector acceptance with pseudorapidities $`1<\eta _{\mathrm{jet},\mathrm{lab}}<2.5`$ and transverse jet energies $`E_{T\mathrm{Breit}}>5\mathrm{GeV}`$ are considered.

The inclusive jet cross section $`\mathrm{d}^2\sigma _{\mathrm{jet}}/\mathrm{d}E_T\mathrm{d}Q^2`$ has been measured for $`7<E_{T\mathrm{jet},\mathrm{Breit}}<50\mathrm{GeV}`$. For the dijet cross section events with two or more jets have been selected where the two jets with the highest $`E_T`$ fulfill $`E_T>17\mathrm{GeV}`$. Double differential distributions have been obtained for a large set of variables . Here we show the dependence of the inclusive jet cross section on both hardness scales $`E_T`$, $`Q^2`$ (Fig. 1), and the dependence of the dijet cross section on the jet pseudorapidity $`\eta ^{}`$ and the reconstructed fractional parton momentum $`\xi `$ (Figs. 2,3). The basic observations are: towards larger $`Q^2`$ a harder $`E_T`$ spectrum is seen; large jet pseudorapidities $`\eta ^{}`$ are suppressed at higher $`E_T`$; the jet cross sections are sensitive to fractional parton momenta $`0.005<\xi <0.3`$.

The perturbative calculations give a very good description of these and other distributions , except at small values of $`Q^2<100\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ where NLO corrections are very large (k-factors are between 1.6 and 2) and sizeable contributions from higher orders are expected.

## 3 QCD ANALYSIS

We have seen that the jet data are nicely described by perturbative calculations at NLO when parton densities and $`\alpha _s(M_Z)`$ values are taken from global fits. We therefore conclude that perturbative QCD at next-to-leading order $`\alpha _s`$ is able to describe jet production processes in DIS, at least in the kinematic region under investigation: at fairly large transverse jet energies $`E_T`$ in the Breit frame and momentum transfers $`Q^2`$ not too small. The influence of non-perturbative contributions has been investigated  and is found to be small (below 7% for the dijet cross sections) with negligible model dependence.

It is now straightforward to make a QCD analysis of these data for a determination of the free parameters of the theory: $`\alpha _s`$, the gluon density and the quark densities in the proton. The present data are, however, not able to constrain these simultaneously. We therefore decided to take the value of $`\alpha _s(M_Z)`$ (as e.g. measured by the LEP experiments independently of the proton structure) as external input, and perform a simultaneous fit of the gluon and quark densities in the proton. For this purpose we include H1 data on the inclusive DIS cross section  in the QCD analysis at $`Q^2`$ values which are of the order of the transverse jet energies $`E_T^2`$ in the dijet cross sections.

In this kinematic region ($`200<Q^2<650\mathrm{GeV}^2`$) the inclusive DIS cross sections give very strong constraints on the quark densities while they depend on the gluon density only weakly. In the combined fit of both datasets the inclusive DIS cross sections therefore determine the quarks while the dijet cross sections determine the gluon density.

The dijet data used in the fit are restricted to $`Q^2>200\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ where NLO corrections and hadronization corrections are small. The fit has been performed to the double differential cross sections $`\mathrm{d}^2\sigma _{\mathrm{dijet}}/\mathrm{d}Q^2\mathrm{d}\xi `$, $`\mathrm{d}^2\sigma _{\mathrm{dijet}}/\mathrm{d}Q^2\mathrm{d}x_{\mathrm{Bj}}`$ and $`\mathrm{d}^2\sigma _{\mathrm{incl}.}/\mathrm{d}Q^2\mathrm{d}x_{\mathrm{Bj}}`$ which are most sensitive to the $`x`$-dependence of the parton distributions. The gluon and the quark densities have been fitted at a factorization scale $`\mu _f^2=200\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ which is of the size of the hard scales for both the dijet ($`\mu _f^2E_T^2`$) and the inclusive DIS cross sections ($`\mu _f^2Q^2`$). More details on the fitting procedure can be found in .

The resulting gluon density is displayed in Fig. 4 at the scale $`\mu _f^2=200\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ in the range $`0.01<x<0.1`$. The error band includes experimental and theoretical uncertainties as well as the uncertainty of $`\alpha _s(M_Z)`$. Within these uncertainties this direct determination is consistent to the results from global fits and to indirect determinations from HERA structure function data and extends their range of sensitivity to larger $`x`$-values.