Unitarity Cuts, t-channel Divergences and the KLN Theorem for Unstable Particles

Abstract

Many phenomenological calculations involving massless or unstable particles suffer from divergences as mediating particles go on-shell. One way to deal with these divergences is via the Kinoshita-Lee-Nauenberg (KLN) theorem, which guarantees that by summing over all physically-degenerate processes, the divergences cancel and inclusive observables remain finite. However, actually implementing this theorem in practice requires handling disconnected diagrams, ill-defined distributional objects, threshold behavior and subtle regulator dependence. In this work, we formulate practical prescriptions for dealing with some of these issues by studying the KLN cancellation in an illustrative model exhibiting a t-channel divergence. We demonstrate intricate cancellations across several regularization schemes, connect our results to the complex-analytic structure of the underlying amplitudes, and take steps towards constructing a finite, fixed-order, inclusive t-channel collider observable. This work highlights both the utility of the KLN theorem, and also the technical subtleties and open questions involved with applying it in practice.