Deep Inelastic Scattering: CGC at NLO Meets Data

by Dr Heikki Mäntysaari (University of Jyväskylä)

Tuesday 9 Jun 2026, 11:00 → 12:00 US/Eastern

Small Seminar Room (Bldg 510)

At high energies, the rapid growth of gluon densities inside hadrons and nuclei is expected to be tamed by non-linear QCD dynamics, leading to the phenomenon of gluon saturation. The Color Glass Condensate (CGC) effective theory provides a framework for describing this regime. While many phenomenological applications have so far relied on leading-order calculations, substantial progress has recently been made towards next-to-leading order (NLO) precision.

In this talk, I review recent developments in NLO CGC phenomenology. I discuss the first global analyses of HERA deep inelastic scattering data using NLO impact factors together with NLO small-$x$ evolution, and show that a simultaneous description of inclusive and charm structure-function data can be achieved. I also present recent advances in diffractive DIS, including the implementation of the numerically dominant NLO contributions and the identification of a sizable soft-quark contribution that has been neglected in previous phenomenological studies. These results mark an important step toward precision studies of gluon saturation and future analyses of Electron-Ion Collider data.