Single inclusive hadron and jet production in lepton-hadron scattering

Abstract

We present the first calculation of single inclusive hadron and jet production at large transverse momentum in lepton-hadron scattering in a joint QCD+QED factorization approach. The scattering cross section is factorized into a convolution of infrared-safe hard coefficient functions with universal lepton distribution functions (LDFs) and parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the colliding lepton and hadron, respectively, together with fragmentation functions (FFs) of the observed hadron (or jet). With joint QCD+QED factorization, the DGLAP-type evolution equations for LDFs, PDFs, and FFs necessarily have evolution kernels calculated in both QCD and QED. We derive a default set of LDFs for our calculations and discuss a strategy to extract universal, non-perturbative LDFs from future data. We present our calculations for single inclusive hadron and/or jet production at the energies of Jefferson Lab and the future Electron-Ion Collider.