No Arabic abstract
We present the full analytic result for the three-loop angle-dependent cusp anomalous dimension in QCD. With this result, infrared divergences of planar scattering processes with massive particles can be predicted to that order. Moreover, we define a closely related quantity in terms of an effective coupling defined by the light-like cusp anomalous dimension. We find evidence that this quantity is universal for any gauge theory, and use this observation to predict the non-planar $n_{f}$-dependent terms of the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension.
We present the details of the analytic calculation of the three-loop angle-dependent cusp anomalous dimension in QCD and its supersymmetric extensions, including the maximally supersymmetric $mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills theory. The three-loop result in the latter theory is new and confirms a conjecture made in our previous paper. We study various physical limits of the cusp anomalous dimension and discuss its relation to the quark-antiquark potential including the effects of broken conformal symmetry in QCD. We find that the cusp anomalous dimension viewed as a function of the cusp angle and the new effective coupling given by light-like cusp anomalous dimension reveals a remarkable universality property -- it takes the same form in QCD and its supersymmetric extensions, to three loops at least. We exploit this universality property and make use of the known result for the three-loop quark-antiquark potential to predict the special class of nonplanar corrections to the cusp anomalous dimensions at four loops. Finally, we also discuss in detail the computation of all necessary Wilson line integrals up to three loops using the method of leading singularities and differential equations.
In this talk we present the result for the $n_f$ dependent piece of the three-loop cusp anomalous dimension in QCD. Remarkably, it is parametrized by the same simple functions appearing in analogous anomalous dimensions in ${mathcal N}=4$ SYM at one and two loops. We also compute all required master integrals using a recently proposed refinement of the differential equation method. The analytic results are expressed in terms of harmonic polylogarithms of uniform weight.
We review the current status of calculations of the HQET field anomalous dimension and the cusp anomalous dimension. In particular, we give the results at 4 loops for the quartic Casimir contribution, and for the full QED case, up to $varphi^6$ in the small angle expansion. Furthermore, we discuss the leading terms in the anti-parallel lines limit at four loops.
We present the complete formula for the cusp anomalous dimension at four loops in QCD and in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills. In the latter theory it is given by begin{equation} {Gamma}^{rm}_{rm cusp}Big|_{alpha_s^4} = -left( frac{alpha_s N}{pi}right)^4 left[ frac{73 pi^6}{20160} + frac{ zeta_{3}^2}{8} + frac{1}{N^2} left( frac{31pi^6}{5040} + frac{9 zeta_3^2}{4} right) right] ,. onumber end{equation} Our approach is based on computing the correlation function of a rectangular light-like Wilson loop with a Lagrangian insertion, normalized by the expectation value of the Wilson loop. In maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, this ratio is a finite function of a cross-ratio and the coupling constant. We compute it to three loops, including the full colour dependence. Integrating over the position of the Lagrangian insertion gives the four-loop Wilson loop. We extract its leading divergence, which determines the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension. Finally, we employ a supersymmetric decomposition to derive the last missing ingredient in the corresponding QCD result.
The angle-dependent cusp anomalous dimension governs divergences coming from soft gluon exchanges between heavy particles, such as top quarks. We focus on the matter-dependent contributions and compute the first truly non-planar terms. They appear at four loops and are proportional to a quartic Casimir operator in color space. Specializing our general gauge theory result to U(1), we obtain the full QED four-loop angle-dependent cusp anomalous dimension. While more complicated functions appear at intermediate steps, the analytic answer depends only on multiple polylogarithms with singularities at fourth roots of unity. It can be written in terms of four rational structures, and contains functions of up to maximal transcendental weight seven. Despite this complexity, we find that numerically the answer is tantalizingly close to the appropriately rescaled one-loop formula, over most of the kinematic range. We take several limits of our analytic result, which serves as a check and allows us to obtain new, power-suppressed terms. In the anti-parallel lines limit, which corresponds to production of two massive particles at threshold, we find that the subleading power correction vanishes. Finally, we compute the quartic Casimir contribution for scalars in the loop. Taking into account a supersymmetric decomposition, we derive the first non-planar corrections to the quark anti-quark potential in maximally supersymmetric gauge theory.