Measurement of the photon structure functionF2γ(x, Q2) in the region 0.2<Q2<7 GeV2

We present a measurement of the photon structure functionF₂^γ in the reactionee→eeX forQ² in the range 0.2<Q²<7 GeV², using 9,200 multihadron events obtained with the TPC/Two-Gamma detector at PEP. The data have been corrected for detector effects using a regularized unfolding procedure and are presented as a function ofx andQ². The structure function shows scaling in the region 0.3<Q²<1.6 GeV²,x<0.3 and rises for higherQ². AtQ²=5.1 GeV² the results are compared with QCD and, within the scheme of Antoniadis and Grunberg, rather conservative bounds for the QCD scale parameter of 133±50< <img src="/fulltext-image.asp?format=htmlnonpaginated&src=L6H6055558525750_html\10052_2005_Article_BF01561108_TeX2GIFIE1.gif" border="0" alt=" $$\Lambda _{\overline {{\rm M}S} } $$ " /><268±98 MeV are obtained. A study of the final state structure shows that the rise ofF₂^γ is consistent with being entirely due to the pointlike component of the photon.