Determination of the asymptotic behaviour of the heavy flavour coefficient functions in deep inelastic scattering

Abstract

Using renormalization group techniques we have derived analytic formulae for the next-to-leading order heavy-quark coefficient functions in deep inelastic lepton hadron scattering. These formulae are only valid in the kinematic regime Q^2 >> m^2, where Q^2 and m^2 stand for the masses squared of the virtual photon and heavy quark respectively. Some of the applications of these asymptotic formulae will be discussed.