The parton model and its applications

Abstract

This is a review of the program we started in 1968 to understand and generalize Bjorken scaling and Feynman's parton model in a canonical quantum field theory. It is shown that the parton model proposed for deep inelastic electron scatterings can be derived if a transverse momentum cutoff is imposed on all particles in the theory so that the impulse approximation holds. The deep inelastic electron–positron annihilation into a nucleon plus anything else is related by the crossing symmetry of quantum field theory to the deep inelastic electron–nucleon scattering. We have investigated the implication of crossing symmetry and found that the structure functions satisfy a scaling behavior analogous to the Bjorken limit for deep inelastic electron scattering. We then find that massive lepton pair production in collisions of two high energy hadrons can be treated by the parton model with an interesting scaling behavior for the differential cross-sections. This turns out to be the first example of a class of hard processes involving two initial hadrons.