Measurement of the photon structure functionF2γ in the reactione+e−→e+e−+hadrons at LEP

We present measurements of the hadronic photon structure functionF2γ(x), in twoQ2 ranges with mean values of 5.9 GeV2 and 14.7 GeV2. The data were taken by the OPAL experiment at LEP, with$$\sqrt s$$ close to theZ0 mass and correspond to an integratede+e− luminosity of 44.8 pb−1. In the context of a QCD-based model we find the quark transverse momentum cutoff separating the vector meson dominance (VMD) and perturbative QCD regions to be 0.27±0.10 GeV. We confirm that there is a significant pointlike component of the photon when the probe photon hasQ2>4 GeV2. Our measurements extend to lower values ofx than any previous experiment, and no increase ofF2γ(x) is observed.