Small-x evolution in high-density QCD

by Ian BALITSKY (Jefferson Laboratory, Newport News )

Friday 5 Jul 2002, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Auditorium (CERN)

At high energies, fast quarks and gluons propagate through media along the straight-line classical trajectories. The amplitude of this process is given by the Wilson-line operator - phase factor acquired by the particle after propagation along the straight line. The small-x behaviour of structure functions of deep inelastic scattering is governed by the evolution of the Wilson-line operators with respect to the slope of the line. While in the pQCD regime the small-x evolution of Wilson lines is described by the linear BFKL equation, in the high-density regime this evolution turns out to be non-linear. The non-linear evolution equation for Wilson-line operators determines the small-x behaviour of the eA structure functions in the saturation region. The solution of this equation is given by the 2+1 effective field theory formulated in terms of Wilson-line degrees of freedom.