The spread of the gluon k_t-distribution and the determination of the saturation scale at hadron colliders in resummed NLL BFKL

The transverse momentum distribution of soft hadrons and jets that accompany central hard-scattering production at hadron colliders is of great importance, since it has a direct bearing on the ability to separate new physics signals from Standard Model backgrounds. We compare the predictions for the gluonic k_t-distribution using two different approaches: resummed NLL BFKL and DGLAP evolution. We find that as long as the initial and final virtualities (k_t) along the emission chain are not too close to each other, the NLL resummed BFKL results do not differ significantly from those obtained using standard DGLAP evolution. The saturation momentum Q_s(x), calculated within the resummed BFKL approach, grows with 1/x even slower than in the leading-order DGLAP case.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, An improved, slightly more precise NLL resummation is used and the figures are updated accordingly. The conclusions are unchange

Exclusive photoproduction of hard dijets and magnetic susceptibility of QCD vacuum

We argue that coherent production of hard dijets by linearly polarized real photons can provide direct evidence for chirality violation in hard processes, the first measurement of the magnetic susceptibility of the quark condensate and the photon distribution amplitude. It can also serve as a sensitive probe of the generalized gluon parton distribution. Numerical calculations are presented for HERA kinematics.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Exotic hybrid mesons in hard electroproduction

We estimate the sizeable cross section for deep exclusive electroproduction of an exotic $J^{PC}=1^{-+}$ hybrid meson in the Bjorken regime. The production amplitude scales like the one for usual meson electroproduction, i.e. as $1/Q^2$. This is due to the non-vanishing leading twist distribution amplitude for the hybrid meson, which may be normalized thanks to its relation to the energy momentum tensor and to the QCD sum rules technique. The hard amplitude is considered up to next-to-leading order in $\alpha_{S}$ and we explore the consequences of fixing the renormalization scale ambiguity through the BLM procedure. We study the particular case where the hybrid meson decays through a $\pi\eta$ meson pair. We discuss the $\pi\eta$ generalized distribution amplitude and then calculate the production amplitude for this process. We propose a forward-backward asymmetry in the production of $\pi$ and $\eta$ mesons as a signal for the hybrid meson production. We briefly comment on hybrid electroproduction at very high energy, in the diffractive limit where a QCD Odderon exchange mechanism should dominate. The conclusion of our study is that hard electroproduction is a promissing way to study exotic hybrid mesons, in particular at JLAB, HERA (HERMES) or CERN (Compass)

Factorization and high-energy effective action

I demonstrate that the amplitude for high-energy scattering can be factorized as a convolution of the contributions due to fast and slow fields. The fast and slow fields interact by means of Wilson-line operators -- infinite gauge factors ordered along the straight line. The resulting factorization formula gives a starting point for a new approach to the effective action for high-energy scattering in QCD.Comment: 34 pages, Latex, 13 postscript figures, submitted to PR

Next-to-leading and resummed BFKL evolution with saturation boundary

We investigate the effects of the saturation boundary on small-x evolution at the next-to-leading order accuracy and beyond. We demonstrate that the instabilities of the next-to-leading order BFKL evolution are not cured by the presence of the nonlinear saturation effects, and a resummation of the higher order corrections is therefore needed for the nonlinear evolution. The renormalization group improved resummed equation in the presence of the saturation boundary is investigated, and the corresponding saturation scale is extracted. A significant reduction of the saturation scale is found, and we observe that the onset of the saturation corrections is delayed to higher rapidities. This seems to be related to the characteristic feature of the resummed splitting function which at moderately small values of x possesses a minimum.Comment: 34 page

Multi-particle Production and Thermalization in High-Energy QCD

We argue that multi-particle production in high energy hadron and nuclear collisions can be considered as proceeding through the production of gluons in the background classical field. In this approach we derive the gluon spectrum immediately after the collision and find that at high energies it is parametrically enhanced by ln(1/x) with respect to the quasi-classical result (x is the Bjorken variable). We show that the produced gluon spectrum becomes thermal (in three dimensions) with an effective temperature determined by the saturation momentum Qs, T= c Qs/2pi during the time ~1/T; we estimate c=sqrt{2pi}/2 ~ 1.2. Although this result by itself does not imply that the gluon spectrum will remain thermal at later times, it has an interesting applications to heavy ion collisions. In particular, we discuss the possibility of Bose-Einstein condensation of the produced gluon pairs and estimate the viscosity of the produced gluon system.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures; typos fixed; discussions expanded; we added a new section IV in which we argue that at high energies the production mechanism discussed in the paper is parametrically enhanced by ln(1/x) with respect to the quasi-classical resul

Limiting fragmentation in hadron-hadron collisions at high energies

Limiting fragmentation in proton-proton, deuteron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions is analyzed in the framework of the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation in high energy QCD. Good agreement with experimental data is obtained for a wide range of energies. Further detailed tests of limiting fragmentation at RHIC and the LHC will provide insight into the evolution equations for high energy QCD.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figures (2 new figures, text slightly expanded, and some additional references

Veneziano Ghost Versus Isospin Breaking

It is argued that an account for the Veneziano ghost pole, appearing in resolving the U(1) problem, is necessary for understanding an isospin violation in the $\pi - \eta - \eta'$ system. By virtue of a perturbative expansion around the $SU(2)_{V}$ ( $m_{u} = m_{d}$ ) symmetric Veneziano solution, we find that the ghost considerably suppresses isospin breaking gluon and s-quark matrix elements. We speculate further on a few cases where the proposed mechanism can play an essential role. We discuss the isospin violation in meson-nucleon couplings and its relevance to the problem of charge asymmetric nuclear forces and possible breaking of the Bjorken sum rule. It is shown that the ghost pole could yield the isospin violation of order 2 \% for the $\pi N$ couplings and 20 \% for the Bjorken sum rule.Comment: 16 pages , Preprint TAUP-2127-9

Light Cone Sum Rules for the pi0-gamma*-gamma Form Factor Revisited

We provide a theoretical update of the calculations of the pi0-gamma*-gamma form factor in the LCSR framework, including up to six polynomials in the conformal expansion of the pion distribution amplitude and taking into account twist-six corrections related to the photon emission at large distances. The results are compared with the calculations of the B-> pi l nu decay and pion electromagnetic form factors in the same framework. Our conclusion is that the recent BaBar measurements of the pi0-gamma*-gamma form factor at large momentum transfers are consistent with QCD, although they do suggest that the pion DA may have more structure than usually assumed.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures, 5 table

Spin-dependent twist-4 matrix elements from the instanton vacuum: Flavor-singlet and nonsinglet

We estimate the twist-4 spin-1 nucleon matrix element f_2 in an instanton-based description of the QCD vacuum. In addition to the flavor-nonsinglet we compute also the flavor-singlet matrix element, which appears in next-to-leading order of the (1/N_c)-expansion. The corresponding twist-3 spin-2 matrix elements d_2 are suppressed in the packing fraction of the instanton medium, (\bar \rho)/(\bar R) << 1. We use our results to estimate the leading (1/Q^2) power corrections to the first moment of the proton and neutron spin structure functions G_1, as well as the intrinsic charm contribution to the nucleon spin.Comment: 17 pages, 4 eps figures include