Investigations on the transition from nonperturbative to perturbative QCD in inelastic $e^{+}$p scattering at HERA

Recent results on the measurement of the proton structure function F /sub 2/ from both HERA experiments H1 and ZEUS, allowed us to investigate the behavior of F/sub 2/ in the transition region from photoproduction to deep-inelastic scattering. The x and Q/sup 2/ dependence of F/sub 2/ in the transition region is quantified using a simple phenomenological fit. A detailed phenomenological analysis as well as a QCD analysis have been carried out to investigate the limitations of a nonperturbative and a perturbative QCD description. (9 refs).