The Evolution of Unpolarized and Polarized Structure Functions at Small $x$

Abstract

A survey is given of recent developments on the resummed small-$x$ evolution, in a framework based on the renormalization group equation, of non--singlet and singlet structure functions in both unpolarized and polarized deep--inelastic scattering. The available resummed anomalous dimensions are discussed for all these cases, and the most important analytic and numerical results are compiled. The quantitative effects of these small-$x$ resummations on the evolution of the various parton densities and structure functions are presented, and their present uncertainties are investigated. An application to QED radiative corrections is given.