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  • Open Access

Studying two-photon exchange in deep inelastic scattering with HERA data

Henry T. Klest*

  • *Contact author:hklest@anl.gov
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 014045 – Published 30 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/v6jm-jdxy

Abstract

Two-photon exchange (TPE) is one of the leading explanations for discrepancies in measurements of the proton electromagnetic form factors. It has been proposed that TPE could impact not only elastic scattering but also the cross sections for both inclusive deep inelastic scattering (DIS) and semi-inclusive DIS, thereby affecting the interpretation of DIS structure functions in terms of parton distributions. It is expected that higher-order QED effects such as TPE should manifest as a deviation from unity in the ratio of e+p and e−p DIS cross sections. We use the existing inclusive e±p DIS data from HERA and SLAC to constrain higher-order QED effects on inclusive DIS.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 014045– Published 30 January, 2026
  • Received 6 August 2025
  • Accepted 2 January 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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