Multiple soft radiation at one-loop order and the emission of a soft quark–antiquark pair
Stefano Catani, Leandro Cieri
Abstract
Abstract We consider the radiation of two or more soft partons in QCD hard-scattering at one-loop order. The corresponding scattering amplitude is singular, and the singular behaviour is controlled by a process-independent soft current. Using regularization in $$d=4 - 2\epsilon $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>4</mml:mn> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mi>ϵ</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> space-time dimensions, we explicitly evaluate the ultraviolet and infrared divergent ( $$\epsilon $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>ϵ</mml:mi> </mml:math> -pole) terms of the one-loop soft current for emission of an arbitrary number of soft partons in a generic hard-scattering process. Then we consider the specific case of soft quark–antiquark ( $$q{{\bar{q}}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mover> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) emission and we compute the one-loop current by including the finite terms. We find that the one-loop soft- $$q{{\bar{q}}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mover> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> current exhibits a new type of transverse-momentum singularity, which has a quantum (absorptive) origin and a purely non-abelian character. At the squared amplitude (cross section) level, this transverse-momentum singularity produces contributions to multijet production processes in hadron collisions. The one-loop squared current also leads to charge asymmetry terms, which are a distinctive features of soft- $$q{{\bar{q}}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mover> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> radiation. We also extend these results to the cases of QED and mixed QCD $$\times $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> </mml:math> QED radiative corrections for soft fermion–antifermion emission.