The T-Wilson Line

We argue that soft-collinear effective theory, as is currently formulated, lacks an ingredient which is essential for obtaining a gauge invariant definitions of certain non-perturbative matrix elements relevant for semi-inclusive high-energy processes. Those processes and the companion cross-sections are to be analyzed and measured at the Large Hadron Collider. The missing feature is a gauge link constructed only from the transverse component of the gluon field denoted by the "$T$-Wilson line"'. It is neither soft nor collinear. As such it is a new feature of the theory.Comment: 4 pages. To appear in the proceedings of "Quark Confinement and Hadron Nuclei", Madrid 201

Pair Production of Color-Octet Scalars at the LHC

Heavy colored scalar particles, which exist in many models of new physics, can be pair produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) via gluon-gluon fusion and possibly form quarkonium-like bound states. If the scalars are also charged under the electroweak gauge group, these bound states can then decay into electroweak bosons. This yields a resonant cross section for final states such as gamma gamma that can exceed Standard Model backgrounds. This paper studies this process in the Manohar-Wise model of color-octet scalars (COS). Important threshold logarithms and final state Coulomb-like QCD interactions are resummed using effective field theory. We compute the resummed cross section for gluon-gluon fusion to COS pairs at the LHC as well as the resonant cross section for octetonium decaying to gamma gamma. The latter cross section exceeds the Standard Model di-photon cross section when the COS mass is less than 500 (350) GeV for sqrt{s} = 14 (7) TeV. Nonobservation of resonances below these energies can significantly improve existing bounds on COS masses.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, published versio

Extending Soft-Collinear-Effective-Theory to describe hard jets in dense QCD media

An extension to the Soft-Collinear-Effective Theory (SCET) description of hard jets is motivated to include the leading contributions between the propagating partons within the jet with partons radiated from a dense extended medium. The resulting effective Lagrangian, containing both a leading and a power suppressed (in the hard scale $Q^2$) contribution, arises primarily from interactions between the hard collinear modes in the jet with Glauber modes from the medium. In this first attempt, the interactions between the hard jet and soft and collinear partonic modes have been ignored, in an effort to focus solely on the interactions with the Glauber modes. While the effect of such modes on vacuum cross sections are suppressed by powers of the hard scale compared to the terms from the SCET Lagrangian, such sub-leading contributions are enhanced by the extent of the medium and result in measurable corrections. The veracity of the derived Lagrangian is checked by direct comparison with known results from full QCD calculations of two physical observables: the transverse momentum broadening of hard jets in dense media and a reanalysis of the transverse momentum dependent parton distribution function (TMDPDF).Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, revtex4, discussion on power counting updated, references adde