Multiperipheral Theory of Deep-Inelastic Electron-Nucleon Scattering

The Amati-Bertocchi-Fubini-Stanghellini-Tonin multiperipheral model is modified to study deep-inelastic electron-nucleon scattering. The behavior of the structure functions is derived in the limit of large energy and momentum transfer, $\nu$ and $q^2$, with $\omega \equiv \frac{2m\nu }{(-q^2)}$ fixed but large. In particular, scaling is derived. To accomplish this derivation it is necessary to introduce a cutoff for the momentum transfer of the exchange nucleon, which directly couples to the photon in the multiperipheral chain. The multiperipheral derivation is compared with derivations that use other models. The generality of our derivation, in the sense of requiring only Regge behavior and a particular asymptotic off-shell dependence, is discussed.