Scaling Violation in Power Corrections to Energy Correlators from the Light-Ray Operator Product Expansion

Area of Science:

• High-energy physics
• Quantum field theory
• Particle collider physics

Background:

• Energy correlators are key tools for studying strong interactions at particle colliders.
• Understanding nonperturbative effects is crucial for precise theoretical predictions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate nonperturbative power corrections to projected N-point energy correlators.
• To analyze these corrections in the small-angle limit between detectors.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing the light-ray operator product expansion (OPE) as a theoretical framework.
• Deriving power corrections in terms of nonperturbative quark and gluon fragmentation functions.
• Comparing analytic predictions with Monte Carlo simulations.

Main Results:

• Nonperturbative power corrections exhibit classical scaling behavior, violated at the quantum level.
• A calculable dependence on the hard scale Q emerges, consistent with perturbation theory.
• Analytic predictions show excellent agreement with Monte Carlo simulations for lepton and hadron colliders.

Conclusions:

• This work provides a novel method for calculating nonperturbative effects in energy correlators.
• The findings advance the understanding of strong interaction observables in collider physics.
• The validated predictions offer improved tools for analyzing experimental data.