Abstract

This review stresses the theoretical elements that underlie a wide range of phenomenological studies of high-energy QCD, which include both soft and hard processes. After a brief introduction to the basics of QCD, various aspects of QCD-based phenomenology are covered: color transparency, hadronization of color charges, Regge phenomenology, parton model, Bjorken scaling and its violation, DGLAP evolution equation, BFKL formalism, GLR-MQ evolution equation and saturation. In the last part of the review, we employ the light-cone dipole formalism to describe deep inelastic lepton scattering, Drell Yan processes, direct photon production, diffraction, quark and gluon shadowing in nuclei, the Cronin effect and nuclear broadening. © 2009 World Scientific Publishing Company.