Measurement of the proton structure function F2 (x, Q2) in the low-x region at HERA

A measurement of the proton structure function F2 (x, Q2) is presented with about 1000 neutral current deep inelastic scattering events for Bjorken x in the range x ⋍ 10−2 – 10−4 and Q2 > 5 GeV2. The measurement is based on an integrated luminosity of 22.5 nb−1 recorded by the H1 detector in the first year of HERA operation. The structure function F2 (x, Q2) shows a significant rise with decreasing x.