Color-glass condensate beyond the Gaussian approximation

Abstract

In the high-energy limit, perturbative calculations in QCD are conveniently done using the dipole picture which factorizes the scattering amplitude into a perturbative part and the nonperturbative scattering off the nuclear target, described using correlators of Wilson lines. These correlators can be computed in the color-glass condensate effective field theory by using a Gaussian model for the color density of the target. In this work, we generalize the Gaussian model to a generic function that is local in the transverse coordinates and the light-cone time, and show how to compute physical Wilson-line correlators in this model. We also consider a simple model for the color density based on stable probability distributions and show that the small-dipole behavior of the dipole amplitude is modified from quadratic to a power law, where the power is given by the stability parameter of the distribution. This generalization of the Gaussian model is suitable for numerical applications in the high-energy limit and can be used in future phenomenological studies of the nuclear structure.