Cusped light-like Wilson loops in gauge theories

Abstract

We propose and discuss a new approach to the analysis of the correlation functions which contain light-like Wilson lines or loops, the latter being cusped in addition. The objects of interest are therefore the light-like Wilson null-polygons, the soft factors of the parton distribution and fragmentation functions, high-energy scattering amplitudes in the eikonal approximation, gravitational Wilson lines, etc. Our method is based on a generalization of the universal quantum dynamical principle by J. Schwinger and allows one to take care of extra singularities emerging due to light-like or semi-light-like cusps. We show that such Wilson loops obey a differential equation which connects the area variations and renormalization group behavior of those objects and discuss the possible relation between geometrical structure of the loop space and area evolution of the light-like cusped Wilson loops.

Invited mini-review article to Physics of Particles and Nuclei. 16 pages, 9 eps figures; v2: references style changed, citations corrected and updated

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• Wilson Loops and Minimal Surfaces
• Final state interactions and gauge invariant parton distributions
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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Parton Orbital Angular Momentum and Final State Interactions
• The Non-Abelian Exponentiation theorem for multiple Wilson lines
• Webs and Posets
• Multiple Gluon Exchange Webs
• Inclusive Single-Spin Asymmetries, Quark-Photon, and Quark-Quark Correlations
• Transverse Force on Quarks in DIS
• On Geometric Scaling of Light-Like Wilson Polygons: Higher Orders in ${\alpha }_s$
• Piecewise Linear Wilson lines
• Fréchet derivative for light-like Wilson Loops
• A new approach to piecewise linear Wilson lines
• Working With Wilson Lines
• Transverse-Distance Dependent Parton Densities in the Large-$x$ Regime
• Evolution and dynamics of cusped light-like Wilson loops (Hadron 2013)