Quark masses and specific scaling in deep-inelastic processes

Within an operator-product expansion, the problem of the quark-mass dependence of the heavy-flavor contribution to the structure function F-2 in the current-fragmentation region is considered at high values of the momentum transfer squared Q(2). A linear combination of the structure functions F-2(C) and F-2 is found that possesses a specific scaling property for Q(2) --> infinity at small fixed values of the Bjorken variable x. A lower bound on the ratio F-2(C)/F-2 is calculated and is compared with data obtained at the HERA collider. (C) 2002 MAIK "Nauka/lnterperiodica".