Eur. Phys. J. C (2016) 76: 282
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-4131-8

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

QED corrections to the Altarelli–Parisi splitting functions

¹ Departamento de Física and IFIBA, FCEyN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, (1428) Pabellón 1 Ciudad Universitaria, Capital Federal, Argentina
² International Center for Advanced Studies (ICAS), UNSAM, Campus Miguelete, 25 de Mayo y Francia (1650), Buenos Aires, Argentina
³ Instituto de Física Corpuscular, Universitat de València - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Parc Científic, 46980, Paterna, Valencia, Spain

^* e-mail: german.rodrigo@csic.es

Received: 10 February 2016
Accepted: 7 May 2016
Published online: 20 May 2016

Abstract

We discuss the combined effect of QED and QCD corrections to the evolution of parton distributions. We extend the available knowledge of the Altarelli–Parisi splitting functions to one order higher in QED, and we provide explicit expressions for the splitting kernels up to . The results presented in this article allow one to perform a parton distribution function analysis reaching full NLO QCD–QED combined precision.