Deep inelastic scattering (DIS) is a high-energy particle physics process that provides insights into the internal structure of protons, neutrons, and other hadrons. It involves the scattering of high-energy electrons (or other leptons) off of protons or neutrons, where the energy of the lepton is high enough that it can probe the internal quark and gluon constituents of the target hadron.
Articles by others on the same topic
Scattering that resolves the constituents of a hadron at large spacelike momentum transfer, with an inclusive sum over final hadron states.
In electron scattering from a proton, write the reaction as : the outgoing electron is measured, while denotes all allowed final hadron states. Large momentum transfer supplies a short-distance probe; a large final invariant mass separates the deep continuum from elastic scattering and individual particle resonances. The useful surprise is that an extended proton can have a response characteristic of much smaller constituents. Deep inelastic scattering turns measurements outside the proton into constraints on its internal parton distribution functions.
The SLAC-MIT deep inelastic electron scattering experiment connects this definition to an actual measurement. Its evidence came from distributions of outgoing electron energies and scattering angles, rather than a photograph of a quark. Bjorken scaling concerns deep-inelastic structure functions after known scattering factors have been accounted for; it does not say that the raw differential scattering cross-section is constant.