Photon Fragmentation in Large-Q2 ep Collisions at Next-to-Leading Order QCD

Abstract

We study the production of photons accompanied by jets in large-Q2 deep inelastic scattering. Numerical results for the cross section differential with respect to the fraction of momentum z_gamma carried by a photon inside a jet at large z_gamma, up to O(alpha alpha_s) in perturbative QCD, are presented. The sensitivity to the fragmentation contribution allows one to study the quark-to-photon fragmentation function. Our results can be confronted with future experimental data from HERA.

Comments: 16 pages Latex, 4 eps-figures. Also available via anonymous ftp at ftp://ttpux2.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de/ttp99/ttp99-32/ or via www at http://www-ttp.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de/Preprints/