An analysis of the gluon distribution with next-to-leading order splitting function in small-$x$

Abstract

An approximated solution for gluon distribution from DGLAP evolution equations with NLO splitting function in the small-$x$ limit is presented. We first obtain the simplified forms of LO and NLO splitting functions in the small-$x$ limit. With these approximated splitting functions, we obtain the analytical gluon distribution by using the Mellin transform. The free parameters in the boundary conditions are obtained by fitting the CJ15 gluon distribution data. We find that the asymptotic behavior of gluon distribution are consistent with the CJ15 data, however, the NLO results with the consideration of ``ladder'' structure of gluon emission are slightly better than those from LO. These results indicate that the corrections from NLO is significant and is necessary for a better description of the behavior of the gluon distribution in small-$x$ region. In addition, we investigate the DGLAP evolution of the proton structure function by using the analytical solution of the gluon distribution. The differential structure function shows that our results have a similar tendency with CJ15 at small-$x$.