LaTex, 18 pages, correct typographical error. talk presented at the TJNAF Workshop, "The Transition from Low to High Momentum Transfer Form Factors", September 17, 1999, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia
Some of the most difficult theoretical challenges of QCD occur at the interface of the perturbative and nonperturbative regimes. Exclusive and semi-exclusive processes, the diffractive dissociation of hadrons into jets, and hard diffractive processes such as vector meson leptoproduction provide new testing grounds for QCD and essential information on the structure of light-cone wavefunctions of hadrons, particularly the pion distribution amplitude. I review the basic features of the leading-twist QCD predictions and the problems and challenges of studying QCD at the amplitude level.
We report on a technique for evaluating finite unitarity cut for one-loop amplitudes in gauge theories, and discuss its application to the cut-constructible part of six-gluon amplitude in QCD.
The B-meson distribution amplitude is calculated using QCD sum rules. In particular we obtain an estimate for the integral relevant to exclusive B-decays λ_B = 460 \pm 110 MeV at the scale 1 GeV. A simple QCD-motivated parametrization of the distribution amplitude is suggested.
We discuss the structure of infrared and ultraviolet singularities in on-shell QCD and supersymmetric QCD amplitudes at one-loop order. Previous results, valid for massless partons, are extended to the case of massive partons. Using dimensional regularization, we present a general factorization formula that controls both the singular epsilon-poles and the logarithmic contributions that become singular for vanishing masses. We introduce generalized Altarelli--Parisi splitting functions and discuss their relations with the singular terms in the amplitudes. The dependence on the regularization sc…
Recently, Johansson and Ochirov conjectured the form of a new colour decomposition for QCD tree-level amplitudes. This note provides a proof of that conjecture. The proof is based on "Mario World" Feynman diagrams, which exhibit the hierarchical Dyck structure previously found to be very useful when dealing with multi-quark amplitudes.
Analytic properties of hadronic amplitudes are discussed within the framework of QCD as formulated on the basis of the BRST algebra. Local, composite fields are introduced for hadrons. Given confinement, it is shown that hadronic amplitudes have no thresholds or structure singularities (anomalous thresholds) which are directly related to the underlying quark-gluon structure. In contrast, general amplitudes of QCD must have singularities in channels with non-zero color quantum number, which can be related to unphysical states.
The effective amplitudes for gluon momentum p<<gT in hot QCD exhibit damping as a result of collisions. The whole set of n-point amplitudes is shown to be generated from one functional K(x,y;A), in addition to the induced current j(x;A).
Two-loop four-gluon N=4 susy amplitudes are evaluated via cutting techniques as a testing ground for QCD. A conjecture for four-point amplitudes to all loop orders is described. We also present a new conjecture for the leading-color part of the two-loop five-gluon amplitudes.
We present the tree-level amplitudes involving one, two and three photons that are required for next-to-leading order QCD calculations of production rates of three final-state particles. We also present the required one-loop amplitudes in terms of previously published results.
We show that a well-known simple formula for the explicit infrared poles of one-loop QCD amplitudes has a corresponding simple counterpart in unintegrated form. The unintegrated formula approximates the integrand of one-loop QCD amplitudes in all soft and collinear singular regions. It thus defines a local counter-term for the infrared singularities and can be used as an ingredient for the numerical calculation of one-loop amplitudes.
We present a systematic study of twist-4 light-cone distribution amplitudes of the $K^*$ and $ϕ$ meson in QCD. The structure of SU(3)-breaking corrections is studied in detail. Non-perturbative input parameters are estimated from QCD sum rules and a renormalon based model. As a by-product, we give a complete reanalysis of the parameters of the twist-4 $ρ$-meson distribution amplitudes.
The leading-twist distribution amplitude for the longitudinal rho-meson was studied using QCD Sum Rules with nonlocal condensates and a spectral density which includes next-to-leading order radiative corrections. The obtained profile is compared with results from standard QCD sum rules, lattice QCD, holographic QCD, a light-front quark model, and the instanton liquid model. Preliminary estimates for the first two moments of the transverse $ρ$-meson distribute amplitude are also given.
We report on the two-loop amplitude computation for the mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to the process $gg \to Hg$, with exact dependence on the electroweak boson masses. This amplitude has been employed in the computation of next-to-leading order (NLO) mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to the Higgs-boson production rate in arXiv:2010.09451. The master integrals that appear in the amplitude are evaluated by means of generalized power series expansions, which allows for fast and high-precision numerical evaluation of the amplitude in the physical phase-space, proving to be a powerful tool for…
The holographic QCD prediction for the pion distribution amplitude (DA) $ϕ_{hol}(u)$ is used to compute the pion spacelike electromagnetic form factor $F_π(Q^2)$ within the QCD light-cone sum rule method. In calculations the pion's renormalon-based model twist-4 DA, as well as the asymptotic twist-4 DA are employed. Obtained theoretical predictions are compared with experimental data and with results of the holographic QCD.
We discuss how higher-point QCD amplitudes may be constructed from lower point ones by imposing the factorization constraints in the limits as external momenta become collinear. As a particular example, the all-$n$ gluon one-loop amplitude with maximal helicity violation is presented. We also discuss the necessary collinear behavior of the $n$-gluon amplitudes.
We present a systematic study of twist-3 and twist-4 light-cone distribution amplitudes of the K meson in QCD. The structure of SU(3)-breaking corrections is studied in detail. Non-perturbative input parameters are estimated from QCD sum rules and renormalons. As a by-product, we give a complete reanalysis of the twist-3 and -4 parameters of the pi-meson distribution amplitudes; some of the results differ from those usually quoted in the literature.
We investigate QCD amplitudes with massive quarks computed in the four-dimensional helicity scheme (FDH) and dimensional reduction at NNLO and describe how they are related to the corresponding amplitudes computed in conventional dimensional regularization. To this end, the scheme dependence of the heavy quark and the velocity-dependent cusp anomalous dimensions is determined using soft-collinear effective theory. The results are checked against explicit computations of massive form factors in FDH at NNLO. Our results complete the description of the scheme dependence of QCD amplitudes at NNLO.
I review the recent progress in the evaluation of two-loop massive QCD amplitudes necessary for the description of hadronic scattering processes at the LHC. I put a special emphasis on the case of top-quark final states.
We present analytic results for the one-loop corrections of the helicity amplitudes of the QCD five-parton subprocesses involving four quarks and one gluon obtained with a standard Feynman diagram calculation using dimensional reduction.
We give a summary of existing results on higher twist distribution amplitudes of vector mesons in QCD. Special attention is payed to meson mass corrections which turn out to be large. A ``shopping list'' is presented of most important nonperturbative parameters which enter distribution amplitudes.
We study the factorisation properties of one-loop scattering amplitudes in the triple collinear limit and extract the universal splitting amplitudes for processes initiated by a gluon. The splitting amplitudes are derived from the analytic Higgs plus four partons amplitudes. We present compact results for primitive helicity splitting amplitudes making use of super-symmetric decompositions. The universality of the collinear factorisation is checked numerically against the full colour six parton squared matrix elements.
We study the infrared behaviour of tree-level QCD amplitudes and we derive infrared-factorization formulae that are valid at any perturbative order. We explicitly compute all the universal infrared factors that control the singularities in the various soft and/or collinear limits at O(as^2).
The amplitude for the collision of two hadrons with the lowest order pomeron loop is calculated. Numerical calculations show that the loop contribution to the amplitude begins to dominate the single pomeron exchange at rapidities 8-10. Full dependence of the triple-pomeron vertex on intermediate conformal weights is taken into account.
We present a systematic study of twist-4 light-cone distribution amplitudes of vector mesons in QCD, which is based on conformal expansion. The structure of meson mass corrections is studied in detail. A complete set of distribution amplitudes is constructed, which satisfies all (exact) equations of motion and constraints from conformal expansion. Nonperturbative input parameters are estimated from QCD sum rules. Our study suggests that meson mass corrections may present a dominant source of higher twist effects in exclusive processes.
Reggeon cuts in QCD amplitudes with negative signature are discussed. These cuts appear in the next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic approximation (NNLLA) and greatly complicate the derivation of the BFKL equation. Feynman diagrams responsible for appearance of these cuts are indicated and the cut contributions are calculated in the two- and three-loop approximation.
We discuss the structure of infrared singularities in on-shell QCD amplitudes at two-loop order. We present a general factorization formula that controls all the $\ep$-poles of the dimensionally regularized amplitudes. The dependence on the regularization scheme is considered and the coefficients of the $1/\ep^4, 1/\ep^3$ and $1/\ep^2$ poles are explicitly given in the most general case. The remaining single-pole contributions are also explicitly evaluated in the case of amplitudes with a $q{\bar q}$ pair.
We present the first systematic study of higher-twist light-cone distribution amplitudes of the nucleon in QCD. We find that the valence three-quark state is described at small transverse separations by eight independent distribution amplitudes. One of them is leading twist-3, three distributions are twist-4 and twist-5, respectively, and one is twist-6. A complete set of distribution amplitudes is constructed, which satisfies equations of motion and constraints that follow from conformal expansion. Nonperturbative input parameters are estimated from QCD sum rules.
We describe the decomposition of one-loop QCD amplitudes in terms of colour-ordered building blocks. We give new expressions for the coefficients of QCD colour structures in terms of ordered objects called primitive amplitudes, for processes with up to seven partons. These results are needed in computations of high-multiplicity scattering cross sections in next-to-leading-order (NLO) QCD. We explain the origin of new relations between multi-quark primitive amplitudes which can be used to optimise efficiency of NLO computations. As a first application we compute the full-colour virtual contribu…
We use on-shell recursion relations to determine the one-loop QCD scattering amplitudes with a massless external quark pair and an arbitrary number (n-2) of positive-helicity gluons. These amplitudes are the last of the unknown infrared- and ultraviolet-finite loop amplitudes of QCD. The recursion relations are similar to ones applied at tree level, but contain new non-trivial features corresponding to poles present for complex momentum arguments but absent for real momenta. We present the relations and the compact solutions to them, valid for all n. We also present compact forms for the previ…
The trace amplitude method (TAM) provides us a straightforward way to calculate the helicity amplitudes with massive fermions analytically. In this work, we review the basic idea of this method, and then discuss how it can be applied to next-to-leading order (NLO) quantum chromodynamics (QCD) calculations, which has not been explored before. By analyzing the singularity structures of both virtual and real corrections, we show that the TAM can be generalized to NLO QCD calculations straightforwardly, the only caution is that the unitarity should be guaranteed. We also present a simple example t…
We discuss the pion and kaon distribution amplitudes up to twist-3 in the context of the random instanton vacuum (RIV). We construct explicitly the pertinent quasi-pion and quasi-kaon distributions in the RIV, and analyze them in leading order in the diluteness factor, at a resolution fixed by the inverse instanton size. The distribution amplitudes (DA) follow from the large momentum limit. The results at higher resolution are discussed using QCD evolution, and compared to their asymptotic limits and some lattice results.
We present a systematic study of twist-3 light-cone distribution amplitudes of vector mesons in QCD, which is based on conformal expansion. A complete set of distribution amplitudes is constructed for ρ, ω, K^* and ϕmesons, which satisfies all (exact) equations of motion and constraints from conformal expansion.
We present the publicly available program NGluon allowing the numerical evaluation of primitive amplitudes at one-loop order in massless QCD. The program allows the computation of one-loop amplitudes for an arbitrary number of gluons. The focus of the present article is the extension to one-loop amplitudes including an arbitrary number of massless quark pairs. We discuss in detail the algorithmic differences to the pure gluonic case and present cross checks to validate our implementation. The numerical accuracy is investigated in detail.
We present on the use of on-shell recursion relations. These can be used not only for calculating tree amplitudes, including those with masses, but also to compute analytically the missing rational terms of one-loop QCD amplitudes. Combined with the cut-containing pieces calculated using a unitarity approach complete one-loop QCD amplitudes can be derived. This approach is discussed in the context of the adjacent 2-minus all-multiplicity QCD gluon amplitude.
We describe the recently developed on-shell bootstrap for computing one-loop amplitudes in non-supersymmetric theories such as QCD. The method combines the unitarity method with loop-level on-shell recursion. The unitarity method is used to compute cut-containing parts of amplitudes, and on-shell recursion is used for the remaining rational terms.
Light-front holography allows hadronic amplitudes in the AdS/QCD fifth dimension to be mapped to frame-independent light-front wavefunctions of hadrons in physical space-time, thus providing a relativistic description of hadrons at the amplitude level. The AdS coordinate z is identified with an invariant light-front coordinate zeta which separates the dynamics of quark and gluon binding from the kinematics of constituent spin and internal orbital angular momentum. The result is a single-variable light-front Schrodinger equation for QCD which determines the eigenspectrum and the light-front wav…
We calculate the lowest order QCD amplitude, i.e. the quark exchange contribution, to the forward production amplitude of a pair of longitudinally polarized $ρ$ mesons in the scattering of two virtual photons $γ^*(Q_1) γ^*(Q_2) \to ρ^0_L ρ^0_L$. We show that the scattering amplitude simultaneously factorizes in two quite different ways: the part with transverse photons is described by the QCD factorization formula involving the generalized distribution amplitude of two final $ρ$ mesons, whereas the part with longitudinally polarized photons takes the QCD factorized form with the $γ^*_L \to ρ^0…
We present a systematic study of twist three light-cone distribution amplitudes of vector mesons in QCD, which is based on conformal expansion and takes into account meson and quark mass corrections. A complete set of distribution amplitudes is constructed for rho, omega, K* and phi mesons, which satisfies all (exact) equations of motion and constraints from conformal expansion. Nonperturbative input parameters are calculated from QCD sum rules, including an update of SU(3) breaking corrections in the leading twist distributions.
We study QCD helicity amplitudes with an arbitrary number of (massive) quarks, keeping unobserved (loop) particles in fixed integer $D_s$ dimensions. We find a suitable embedding of external four-dimensional fermion states into higher dimensional spaces. This allows to identify the $D_s$ dependence of amplitudes with external quarks at one and two loops, permitting an analytic continuation in $D_s$. Explicitly we focus on 't Hooft-Veltman and four-dimensional helicity schemes for which we provide a compact prescription for the computation of one- and two-loop amplitudes amenable for numerical …
We propose to make use of the off-shell recursive relations with the color-flow decomposition in the calculation of QCD amplitudes on MadGraph. We introduce colored quarks and their interactions with nine gluons in the color-flow basis plus an Abelian gluon on MadGraph, such that it generates helicity amplitudes in the color-flow basis with off-shell recursive formulae for multi-gluon sub-amplitudes. We demonstrate calculations of up to 5-jet processes such as $gg\rightarrow 5g$, $u\bar{u}\rightarrow 5g$ and $uu\rightarrow uuggg$. Although our demonstration is limited, it paves the way to eval…
We use QCD light-cone sum rules (LCSR) with holographic anti de Sitter/Chromodynamics (AdS/QCD) Distribution Amplitudes (DAs) for the $ρ$ meson to predict the form factors that govern the leading amplitudes of the rare radiative $B -> ργ$ decay and the semileptonic decay $B -> ρl ν$. We test the Isgur-Wise relation between the radiative and semileptonic form factors. We also compute the total width (in units of $|V_{ub}|^2$) for the semileptonic decay $B -> ρl ν$ as well as ratios of partial decay widths which are independent of $|V_{ub}|$.
We present universal factorization formulas describing the behavior of one-loop QCD amplitudes as external momenta become either soft or collinear. Our results are valid to all orders in the dimensional regularization parameter, $\eps$. Terms through $\Ord(\eps^2)$ can contribute in infrared divergent phase space integrals associated with next-to-next-to-leading order jet cross-sections.
The causality and/or the energy-momentum constraints on the amplitudes of high energy processes are generalized to QCD. The constraints imply that the energetic parton may experience at most one inelastic collision only and that the number of the constituents in the light cone wave function of the projectile is increasing with the collision energy and the atomic number.
We present a proof of the Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten tree-level recursion relation for gluon amplitudes in QCD, based on a direct equivalence between BCFW decompositions and Feynman diagrams. We demonstrate that this equivalence can be made explicit when working in a convenient gauge. We exhibit that gauge invariance and the particular structure of Yang-Mills vertices guarantees the validity of the BCFW construction.
We present the computer code RECOLA for the computation of EW and QCD amplitudes in the Standard Model at next-to-leading order. One-loop amplitudes are represented as linear combinations of tensor integrals whose coefficients are calculated by means of recursive relations similar to Dyson-Schwinger equations. A novel treatment of colour enables us to recursively construct the colour structure of the amplitude efficiently. RECOLA is linked with the library COLLIER for the computation of the tensor integrals.
We calculate the one-loop correction to the soft-gluon current with massive fermions. This current is process independent and controls the singular behavior of one-loop massive QCD amplitudes in the limit when one external gluon becomes soft. The result derived in this work is the last missing process-independent ingredient needed for numerical evaluation of observables with massive fermions at hadron colliders at the next-to-next-to-leading order.
Radiative corrections to QCD amplitudes in the quasi-multi-Regge kinematics are interesting in particular since the Reggeized form of these amplitudes is used in the derivation of the NLO BFKL. This form is a hypothesis which must be at least carefully checked, if not proved. We calculate the radiative corrections in the one-loop approximation using the s-channel unitarity. Compatibility of the Reggeized form of the amplitudes with the s-channel unitarity requires fulfillment of the set of nonlinear equations for the Reggeon vertices. We show that these equations are satisfied.
The QCD description of exclusive decays of the $Λ_b$ baryon involves hadronic matrix elements of non-local light ray operators, the light-cone distribution amplitudes. We introduce the complete set of three--quark distribution amplitudes and calculate the renormalization scale dependence for the leading twist. At leading order in the strong coupling the evolution is driven by pairwise two--quark interactions: heavy--light involving Sudakov logarithms as in the B-meson case, and light--light as in light mesons. We solve the evolution equation and show that its main effect is to generate a radia…
Recent progress in our understanding of infrared singularities of multi-parton amplitudes has shown that the simplest form of Regge factorization for high-energy gauge-theory amplitudes fails starting at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. We provide a framework to organize the calculation of parton amplitudes at leading power in t/s, in terms of factorizing and non-factorizing contributions. This allows us to give explicit expressions for the leading Reggeization-breaking terms in two-loop and three-loop quark and gluon amplitudes in QCD. In particular, using only infrared informati…
This talk comments the main features of a hadronic description of QCD in the limit of large number of colours. We derive a quantum field theory for mesons based on chiral symmetry and a perturbative expansion in 1/NC. Some large-NC and next-to-leading order results are reviewed.
We consider the factorization properties of on-shell QCD amplitudes with massive partons in the limit when all kinematical invariants are large compared to the parton mass and discuss the structure of their infrared singularities. The dimensionally regulated soft poles and the large collinear logarithms of the parton masses exponentiate to all orders. Based on this factorization a simple relation between massless and massive scattering amplitudes in gauge theories can be established. We present recent applications of this relation for the calculation of the two-loop virtual QCD corrections to …
We present the current status of the comparisons with the respective data of the predictions of our approach of exact amplitude-based resummation in quantum field theory as applied to precision QCD calculations as needed for LHC physics, using the MC Herwiri1.031. The agreement between the theoretical predictions and the data exhibited continues to be encouraging.
In addressing the B --> eta' K puzzle, there has been a considerable hope in the literature to resolve it by the QCD anomaly contribution to the b --> s eta' amplitude. This contribution corresponds to the electroweak b --> s g* g* transition followed by the off-shell gluon fusion g* g* --> eta'. In the present paper we perform a critical reassessment of this issue. We show that for the hard virtual gluons in a loop there is a well defined short distance amplitude corresponding to a remnant of the QCD anomaly. However, we find that it cannot account for the measured amplitude. In addition, we …
We discuss the structure of infrared singularities in on-shell QCD amplitudes with massive partons and present a general factorization formula in the limit of small parton masses. The factorization formula gives rise to an all-order exponentiation of both, the soft poles in dimensional regularization and the large collinear logarithms of the parton masses. Moreover, it provides a universal relation between any on-shell amplitude with massive external partons and its corresponding massless amplitude. For the form factor of a heavy quark we present explicit results including the fixed-order expa…
We present the two-loop QCD amplitude for the interaction of two gluons and a CP-even Higgs boson in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. We apply a novel numerical method for the evaluation of Feynman diagrams with infrared, ultraviolet and threshold singularities. We discuss subtleties in the ultraviolet renormalization of the amplitude with conventional dimensional regularization, dimensional reduction, and the four dimensional helicity scheme. Finally, we show numerical results for scenarios of supersymmetry breaking with a rather challenging phenomenology in which the Higgs signal i…
We investigate the regularization-scheme dependence of scattering amplitudes in massless QCD and find that the four-dimensional helicity scheme (FDH) and dimensional reduction (DRED) are consistent at least up to NNLO in the perturbative expansion if renormalization is done appropriately. Scheme dependence is shown to be deeply linked to the structure of UV and IR singularities. We use jet and soft functions defined in soft-collinear effective theory (SCET) to efficiently extract the relevant anomalous dimensions in the different schemes. This result allows us to construct transition rules for…
We develop a consistent technique for the calculation of real photon emission in hard exclusive processes, which is based on the background field formalism and allows a convenient separation of hard electromagnetic and soft hadronic components of the photon. The latter ones are related to matrix-elements of light-cone operators in the electromagnetic background field and can be parametrized in terms of photon distribution amplitudes. We construct a complete set of photon distribution amplitudes up to and including twist-4, for both chirality-conserving and chirality-violating operators. The di…
In the context of constructing one-loop amplitudes using a unitarity bootstrap approach we discuss a general systematic procedure for obtaining the coefficients of the scalar bubble and triangle integral functions of one-loop amplitudes. Coefficients are extracted after examining the behaviour of the cut integrand as the unconstrained parameters of a specifically chosen parametersiation of the cut loop momentum approach infinity.
