Scaling violations of the proton structure function F2 at small x

An analysis is presented of scaling violations of the proton structure function F2(x,Q2) measured with the H1 detector at HERA in the range of Bjorken x values between x = 3 × 10−4 and 10−2 for four-momentum transfers Q>2 larger than 8.7 GeV2. The structure function F2(x,Q2) is observed to rise linearly with ln Q2. Under the assumption that the observed scaling violations at small x ⩽ 0.01 are described correctly by perturbative QCD, an estimate is obtained of the gluon distribution function G(x,Q02) at Q22 = 20 GeV2.