Low x Physics and Perturbative Regge Asymptotics

Abstract

Deep-inelastic scattering at small x is a new field of QCD phenomenology which HERA experiments started to explore. The data show the feature expected by the perturbative Regge asymptotics. We describe the parton picture of structure function evolution both for increasing $Q^2$ and for decreasing $x$ and discuss the leading logarithmic approximation of QCD on which this picture is based. The steep rise of the parton density towards smaller $x$ gets saturated by parton recombination. An essential improvement of the leading logarithmic approximation has to be worked out in order to satisfy the unitarity conditions and in this way to describe the parton recombination in perturbative QCD. We review some ideas of the perturbative Regge asymptotics and some recent theoretical results about multi-reggeon exchange in QCD. Talk at the Tennessee Intern. Symposium on Rad. Corrections, prepared for the proceedings.