Instanton Searches at HERA

Abstract

The present status of our ongoing systematic study of the discovery potential of QCD-instanton induced events in deep-inelastic scattering at HERA is briefly reviewed. We emphasize our recent progress in predicting the cross-sections of instanton-induced processes. Our finalized predictions include a dramatic improvement of the residual renormalization-scale dependencies and the specification of a ``fiducial'' kinematical region in the relevant Bjorken variables extracted from recent lattice simulations. Published upper limits on instanton-induced cross-sections based on single observables in the final state such as the flow of strange particles and the multiplicity distribution of charged particles are already of the order of our estimate. Thus, a decisive search for instanton-induced events in deep-inelastic scattering at HERA, based on a multi-observable analysis, seems feasible.