Hard inclusive production of a pair of rapidity-separated hadrons in proton collisions

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the inclusive production of two high transverse momentum hadrons separated by a large rapidity gap in proton-proton collisions, employing the BFKL approach to account for significant higher-order corrections.

Contribution

It provides a next-to-leading order calculation of the impact-factor for inclusive hadron production in high-energy proton collisions using the BFKL framework.

Findings

Calculation of the impact-factor at next-to-leading order.

Inclusion of large logarithmic corrections in the reaction.

Application of BFKL approach to hadron production.

Abstract

We discuss the process $p+p\to h_1+h_2+X$, where the identified hadrons $h_1$ and $h_2$ have large transverse momenta and are produced in high-energy proton-proton collisions with a large rapidity gap between them. In this case the (calculable) hard part of the reaction receives large higher order corrections $\sim \alpha^n_s\ln^n \Delta y$, which can be accounted for in the BFKL approach. Specifically, we describe in the next-to-leading order the calculation of the vertex (impact-factor) for the inclusive production of the identified hadron.