Improved valence PDFs at leading order via connection formulas between the different QCD orders

Abstract

The formulas directly connecting parton distribution functions (PDFs) at the leading (LO) and the next to leading (NLO) QCD orders are applied to both unpolarized and polarized valence PDFs and produce improved LO results on these quantities without exclusion from the analysis the data coming from the small and moderate $Q^2$ region. It is shown that derived in this way and presented in the paper improved LO parametrizations of the valence PDFs could be obtained within the standard LO analysis by using only the data produced at very high $Q^2$ values (that is hardly possible in reality) and they strongly differ from the original LO parametrizations of these quantities, obtained by using the most of data produced at small and moderate $Q^2$ values. It is argued that LO results on PDFs can be significantly improved even if the respective NLO results are still unavailable.