Proton structure from deep inelastic and diffractive scattering

Abstract

We investigate various aspects of the proton structure in this thesis. The first addresses the distribution of the proton spin among its constituents, quarks and gluons. We derive the framework of distribution functions for these constituents and study the properties of the polarized distributions which describe the spin structure of the proton. A determination of the polarized distributions on the basis of present experimental data is presented and options for future measurements are critically evaluated. A second aspect under consideration is the phenomenology of hard diffractive electron-proton scattering. We show how diffractive interaction and hard scattering can be disentangled and suggest experimental tests for this interpretation. Finally, we illustrate how the knowledge on the proton structure can be used for the computation of observables in proton-antiproton collisions, confirming or extending our knowledge of the physics of elementary particles.