Light gluinos and the parton structure of the nucleon

AbstractWe study the effects of light gluinos with $$m_{\tilde g} \lesssim 1$$ GeV on the nucleon parton densities and the running ofαS. It is shown that from the available high-statistics DIS data no lower bound on the gluino mass can be derived. Also in the new kinematical region accessible at HERA the influence of such light gluinos on structure functions is found to be very small and difficult to detect. For use in more direct searches involving final state signatures we present a radiative estimate of the gluino distribution in the nucleon.