The BFKL-Regge factorization and F2b , F2c , FL at HERA: physics implications of nodal properties of the BFKL eigenfunctions

The asymptotic freedom is known to split the leading-log BFKL pomeron into a series of isolated poles in the complex angular momentum plane. One of our earlier findings was that the subleading hard BFKL exchanges decouple from such experimentally important observables as small-x charm F ₂ ^c , beauty F ₂ ^b and the longitudinal structure functions of the proton at moderately large Q ². For instance, we predicted precocious BFKL asymptotics of F ₂ ^c (x, Q ²) with intercept of the rightmost BFKL pole a _IP(0) − 1 = Δ_IP ≈ 0.4. On the other hand, the small-x open beauty photo- and electro-production probes the vacuum exchange for much smaller color dipoles which entails significant subleading vacuum pole corrections to the small-x behavior. In view of the accumulation of the experimental data on small-x F ₂ ^c and F ₂ ^b we extend our 1999 predictions to the kinematical domain covered by new HERA measurements. Our parameter-free results agree well with the determination of F ₂ ^c , F _L and published H1 results F ₂ ^b on but slightly overshoot the very recent (2008, preliminary) H1 results on F ₂ ^b .