Inclusive Jet Production with Virtual Photons in Next-to-Leading Order QCD

We present a next-to-leading order calculation for the virtual photoproduction of one and two jets in ep collisions. Soft and collinear singularities are extracted using the phase space slicing method. The collinear photon initial state singularity depends logarithmically on the mass of the virtual photon and is absorbed into the virtual photon structure function. An MS factorization scheme is defined similarly to the real photon case. Numerical results are presented for HERA conditions using the Snowmass jet definition for inclusive single jet and dijet cross sections. We study the dependence of these cross sections on the transverse energies and rapidities of the jets. Finally, we compare the ratio of the experimentally defined resolved and direct cross sections with recent ZEUS data as a function of the photon virtuality P 2. ∗Supported by Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie, Bonn, Germany, under Contract 05 7 HH 92P (0), and by EEC Program Human Capital and Mobility through Network Physics at High Energy Colliders under Contract CHRX–CT93–0357 (DG12 COMA).