Are There Anomalous Lepton-Hadron Interactions?

Abstract

It is remarked that the recently observed near constancy of $\sigma (e^{+}{e}^{-}\to \mathrm{hadrons})$ over a large range of center-of-mass energy may reflect the presence of a new class of short-range lepton-hadron interactions. This can be tested by a comparison of $e^{-}p$ versus $e^{+}p$ scatterings and a study of the spin, parity, and charge conjugation of the final product in annihilation as well as apparent deviations from scaling in $e^{\pm }p$ and ${\mu }^{\pm }p$ scatterings.