Eur. Phys. J. C 22, 351-357 (2001)
DOI: 10.1007/s100520100796

Nuclear structure functions and heavy flavour leptoproduction off the nucleus at small x in perturbative QCD

N. Armesto¹ and M.A. Braun<sup>2

1</sup>  Departamento de Física, Módulo C2, Planta baja, Campus de Rabanales, Universidad de Córdoba, 14071 Córdoba, Spain
²  Departamento de Física de Partículas, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15706 Santiago de Compostela, Spain

(Received: 10 July 2001 / Revised version: 23 September 2001 / Published online: 5 November 2001 - © Springer-Verlag / Società Italiana di Fisica 2001 )

Abstract
Nuclear structure functions and cross-sec tions for heavy flavour production in lepton-nucleus collisions are investigated in the low x region accessible now or in the near future. The scattering on a heavy nucleus is described by the sum of fan diagrams of BFKL pomerons, which is exact in the high-colour limit. The initial condition for the evolution at x=0.01 is taken from a saturation model, which reproduces the experimental data on the proton. The A dependence of the structure functions is well described by a power factor , with reaching values as low as 1/2 at extremely low x. The total cross-sec tions for heavy flavour production reach values of the order of mb, and the corresponding transverse momentum distributions are sizable up to transverse momenta larger than the initial large scale (Q²+4m_f²)^1/2.

© Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2001