Parton distributions at the dawn of the LHC

Abstract

We review basic ideas and recent developments on the determination of the parton substructure of the nucleon, in view of applications to precision hadron collider physics. We review the way information on parton distributions (PDFs) is extracted from the data exploiting QCD factorization, and discuss the current main two approaches to parton determination (Hessian and Monte Carlo) and their use in conjunction with different kinds of parton parametrization. We summarize the way different physical processes can be used to constrain different aspects of PDFs. We discuss the meaning, determination and use of parton uncertainties. We briefly summarize the current state of the art on PDFs for LHC physics.

51 pages, 34 figures. Based on talks and lectures presented at DIS 2010 (Florence), ICHEP 2010 (Paris), Loopfest 2010 (Stony Brook), HESI2010 (Kyoto), the CTEQ-MCNET School (Lauterbad) and the 50th Cracow School of Theoretical Physics (Zakopane). To be published in the proceedings of the Zakopane School. Several typos corrected and fig 6 improved; final version to be published in Acta Phys. Pol