Heavy-quark contributions to the ratio F_L/F₂ at low x

We study the heavy-quark contribution to the proton structure functions F_2^i(x,Q^2) and F_L^i(x,Q^2), with i=c,b, for small values of Bjorken's x variable at next-to-lading order and provide compact formulas for their ratios R_i=F_L^i/F_2^i that are useful to extract F_2^i(x,Q^2) from measurements of the doubly differential cross section of inclusive deep-inelastic scattering at DESY HERA. Our approach naturally explains why R_i is approximately independent of x and the details of the parton distributions in the small-x regime.