THE MELLIN TRANSFORM TECHNIQUE FOR THE EXTRACTION OF THE GLUON DENSITY

A new method is presented to determine the gluon density in the proton from jet production in deeply inelastic scattering. By using the tech nique of Mellin transforms not only for the solution of the scale evol ution equation of the parton densities but also for the evaluation of scattering cross sections, the gluon density can be extracted in next- to-leading order QCD. The method described in this paper is, however, more general, and can be used in situations where a repeated fast nume rical evaluation of scattering cross sections for varying parton distr ibution functions is required.