Color Dipole Picture of Deep Inelastic Scattering, Revisited

Based upon the color-dipole picture, we provide closed analytic expressions for the longitudinal and the transverse photoabsorption cross sections at low values of the Bjorken variable of x<0.1. We compare with the experimental data for the longitudinal-to-transverse ratio of the (virtual) photoabsorption cross section and with our previous fit to the experimental data for the total photoabsorption cross section. Scaling in terms of the low-x scaling variable eta(W^2,Q^2) is analyzed in terms of the reduced cross section of deep inelastic scattering.