Dijet photoproduction at HERA and the structure of the photon

Abstract

The dijet cross section in photoproduction has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 38.6 pb$^{-1}$. The events were required to have a virtuality of the incoming photon, $Q^2$, of less than 1 GeV$^2$ and a photon-proton centre-of-mass energy in the range $134 < W_{\gamma p} < 277$ GeV. Each event contains at least two jets satisfying transverse-energy requirements of $E_{T}^{\rm jet1}>14$ GeV and $E_{T}^{\rm jet2}>11$ GeV and pseudorapidity requirements of \mbox{$-1<\eta^{\rm jet1,2}<2.4$}. The measurements are compared to next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. The data show particular sensitivity to the density of partons in the photon, allowing the validity of the current parameterisations to be tested.