Subleading Corrections To Thrust Using Effective Field Theory

TL;DR

This paper computes subleading corrections to the thrust rate in high-energy physics using Soft-Collinear Effective Theory, improving theoretical precision for jet shape observables in the perturbative regime.

Contribution

It introduces a method to factorize subleading corrections to thrust using effective field theory, including matching onto higher-dimensional operators and measurement operators.

Findings

Explicit factorization of O(α_s τ) thrust rate into hard, jet, and soft functions.

Method applicable to other jet shapes and rates.

Enhanced understanding of subleading effects in jet observables.

Abstract

We calculate the subleading corrections to the thrust rate using Soft-Collinear Effective Theory to factorize the rate and match onto jet and soft operators that describe the degrees of freedom of the relevant scales. We work in the perturbative regime where all the scales are well above \Lambda_QCD. The thrust rate involves an incomplete sum over final states that is enforced by a measurement operator. Subleading corrections require matching onto not only the higher dimensional dijet operators, but also matching onto subleading measurement operators in the effective theory. We explicitly show how to factorize the O(\alpha_s \tau) thrust rate into a hard function multiplied by the convolution of the vacuum expectation value of jet and soft operators. Our approach can be generalized to other jet shapes and rates.