Determination of the gluon distribution function of the nucleon using energy-energy angular pattern in deep-inelastic muon-deuteron scattering

We have used the energy-energy angular pattern of hadrons in inelastic muon-deuteron scattering to study perturbative QCD effects and to extract the gluon distribution functionηG(η) of the nucleon, whereη is the fractional momentum carried by the gluon. The data were taken with the E665 spectrometer using the Fermilab Tevatron muon beam with a mean beam energy of 490 GeV. We presentηG(η) for 0.005<η<0.05 and at an averageQ 2 of 8 GeV2 using this new technique. We find thatηG(η) in this region can be described byηG(η)α ηλ withλ=−0.87±0.09(stat.)± 0.37 0.32 (sys.). We compare our results to expectations from various parametrizations of the parton distribution function and also to results from HERA.