Resummation of large infrared corrections using Wilson loops

Abstract

We discuss a method to resum systematically large soft gluon corrections to hard hadronic cross sections such as the structure function F( x, Q 2) for x → 1. We show that all singularities as x → 1 are factorized into a Wilson loop expectation value which is a function of the ratio of the infrared scale (1− x) Q 2 and the short distance cutoff μ 2 introduced by the factorization procedure. Thus we obtain the x → 1 behavior by studying the appropriate renormalization group equation which controls the μ-dependence of Wilson loops. Next-to-leading corrections are calculated. The method can be generalized to other distributions.