Instanton-induced processes in deep-inelastic scattering

We present a status report of our systematic theoretical and phenomenological study of QCD-instanton induced processes in deep-inelastic scattering. We show that this regime plays a distinguished role for studying manifestations of QCD-instantons, since the typical hard momentum scale Q provides a dynamical infrared cutoff for the instanton size #rho#<or#approx#O(1/Q). For deep-inelastic scattering at HERA, we present a preliminary theoretical estimate of the total instanton-induced cross-section (subject to appropriate kinematical cuts). It is surprisingly large, in the O(1-100) pb range, albeit still uncertain. We report on our investigation of the discovery potential for instanton-induced events at HERA by means of a Monte Carlo event generator. It is based on a detailed study of the characteristic signatures of the final state, like a large total transverse energy, E_T=O(20) GeV, a large multiplicity, n=O(25), and a flavour-democratic production of hadrons. A combination of event shape information with searches of K"0 mesons, muons, and multiplicity cuts might help to discriminate further the QCD-instanton induced processes from the standard perturbative QCD background. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: RA 2999(96-203) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman