We present a global analysis of available data on inclusive structure functions and reduced cross sections measured in electron-proton scattering at small values of Bjorken-x, x < 0.01, including the latest data from HERA on reduced cross sections. Our approach relies on the dipole formulation of DIS together with the use of the non-linear running coupling BK equation for the description of the small-x dynamics. We improve our previous studies by including the heavy quark (charm and beauty) contribution to the reduced cross sections, and also by considering a variable flavor scheme for the running of the coupling. We obtain a good description of data, the fit parameters remaining stable with respect to our previous analyses where only light quarks were considered. The inclusion of the heavy quark contributions resulted in a good description of available experimental data for the charm component of the structure function and reduced cross section provide the initial transverse distribution of heavy quarks was allowed to differ (more specifically, to have a smaller radius) from that of the light flavors.
We analyze the relation between evolution equations at low x that have been derived in different approaches in the last several years. We show that the equation derived by Balitsky and Kovchegov is obtained from the Jalilian-Marian-Kovner-Leonidov-Weigert (JKLW) equation in the limit of small induced charge density. We argue that the higher nonlinearities resummed by the JKLW equation correspond, in physical terms, to the breakdown of the eikonal approximation when the gluon fields in the target are large.
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