An NLO calculation of the electroproduction of large-E_\bot hadrons

Abstract

We present a Next-to-Leading Order calculation of the cross section for the leptoproduction of large-$E_{\bot}$ hadrons and we compare our predictions with H1 data on the forward production of $\pi^0$. We find large higher order corrections and an important sensitivity to the renormalization and factorization scales. These large corrections are shown to arise in part from BFKL-like diagrams at the lowest order.