High-energy amplitudes and impact factors at next-to-leading order
Résumé
To study scattering amplitudes at high-energy, the T-product of two currents can be expanded in terms of coefficient functions (impact factors) and matrix elements of ``composite color dipoles'' made of Wilson line operators with rapidity cutoff preserving conformal invariance. In the leading order, the high-energy evolution of color dipoles is governed by the non-linear Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK) equation. To describe the high-energy amplitudes in the next-to-leading order (NLO) one needs to know the coefficient function (``impact factor'') and the evolution of corresponding Wilson-line operators. Using the high-energy OPE, we find the next-to-leading order (NLO) correction to the BK equation and calculate the impact factor for virtual photons in deep inelastic scattering.