Abstract
We consider eeqq contact interactions as a possible origin of an excess of events above Standard Model predictions in e + p → e + jet at high Q 2 observed by the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations at HERA. The HERA data prefer chirality RL or LR contact terms and atomic physics parity violation measurements severely limit parity-odd contact terms. With equal left-right and right-left chirality interactions at an effective scale of order 3 TeV we are able to reproduce the main features of the HERA data and still be consistent with Drell-Yan pair production at the Tevatron and hadron production at LEP 2 and TRISTAN. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.