Processes with a hard scale at the LHC as a signature of partonic structure of the proton

Abstract

The main aim of this thesis is a theoretical analysis of selected processes with a hard scale observed in the high-energy proton collisions at the LHC. These processes are considered in the limit of high energies available at the LHC, which allows a closer examination of the parton correlations inside the proton and, in consequence, leads to new information on the partonic structure of hadrons. The analysis carried out in this thesis concerns several problems. First, the Drell-Yan processes were analyzed in the formalism of the color glass condensate. The obtained results were compared with those obtained in the collinear approximation. The rest of the discussed issues concern the double parton scattering. In particular, we analyzed the problem of the specification of initial conditions for QCD evolution equations for double parton distributions, which satisfy non-trivial momentum and valence quark number sum rules. Within the double parton scattering studies, we analyzed the production of electroweak bosons W+W− and Z0Z0 taking into account the so called splitting terms in the QCD evolution equations. The found results show the importance of these terms for the predictions of the cross sections for the considered processes.