This paper is dedicated to the memory of Amos de-Shalit, with deep sadness at the loss, not only of a very distinguished and important scientific colleague, but also of a very close personal friend whose gentleness was matched only by his wisdom. In his tragically brief life he persistently strove to bridge the growing gulfs between different scientific disciplines as also between different cultures and nations. Of special physical interest to him was the unity of concepts in nuclear and particle physics, an example of which is presented here in the form of the impulse approximation.
S.D.D.
We discuss Feynman's parton model for deep inelastic weak or electromagnetic processes as an application of the impulse approximation to elementary particle interactions. The special features and conditions permitting this application are elaborated upon in some detail including the dependence of the parton model and the impulse treatment on an appropriate choice of coordinate frames and the role of the very soft or wee partons. Application of the parton model is made to the calculation of the cross section for massive lepton pair production in very high energy hadron hadron collisions and compared with experiment. The conjectured role of light cone singularities in describing this and the other deep inelastic amplitudes is also discussed.
1971 Academic Press
I. PARTONS AND THE IMPULSE APPROXIMATION
We discuss Feynman's parton model [1] for deep inelastic weak or electromagnetic processes as an application of the impulse approximation to elementary particle interactions. The special features and conditions permitting this application of the impulse approximation, whose roots lie in the nonrelativistic domain of atomic and nuclear bound states, to particle physics are elaborated upon in some detail. In particular we investigate by specific calculation the dependence of the parton model and the impulse treatment on an appropriate choice of coordinate frames and the role of the very soft or wee partons. We also present a more complete discussion of the application of the parton model to the calculation of the cross section for