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Factorized QED and QCD contribution to deeply inelastic scattering

Justin Cammarota1,*, Jian-Wei Qiu1,2,†, Kazuhiro Watanabe3,4,‡, and Jia-Yue Zhang2,§

  • *Contact author: jcammarota@wm.edu
  • †Contact author: jqiu@jlab.org
  • ‡Contact author: kazuhiro.watanabe.b8@tohoku.ac.jp
  • §Contact author: jzhang@jlab.org
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Phys. Rev. D 112, 056007 – Published 10 September, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2d8y-ljwx

Abstract

We present the first calculation of next-to-leading order (NLO) factorized QED and QCD contributions to the short-distance hard coefficients of inclusive lepton-hadron deep inelastic scattering (DIS) in a joint QED and QCD factorization approach. Unlike the traditional radiative correction approach to handle the collision-induced QED contributions to DIS, QED radiation from all charged leptons and quarks are treated equally, and their collinear sensitivities are systematically factorized into corresponding universal lepton and parton distribution functions. We demonstrate that the NLO factorized short-distance QED contribution is completely infrared safe and calculable without the need of any parameters other than the standard factorization scale in the same way as the factorized short-distance QCD contribution. We discuss the potential impact of this joint factorization approach on the extraction of partonic information from lepton-hadron DIS.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 056007– Published 10 September, 2025
  • Received 3 June 2025
  • Accepted 18 August 2025
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