Collinear Factorization in Wide-Angle Hadron Pair Production in $e^+e^-$ Annihilation

TL;DR

This paper investigates the collinear factorization approach for dihadron production in electron-positron annihilation at large transverse momentum, comparing it with TMD-based predictions to understand their agreement and limitations.

Contribution

It provides a leading order pQCD calculation of dihadron production using collinear factorization and compares it with TMD approaches, highlighting the tension at intermediate transverse momentum.

Findings

Significant tension between collinear and TMD predictions at intermediate transverse momentum.

Collinear factorization is effective at large transverse momentum and high energies.

Electron-positron measurements can help resolve the transition between large and small transverse momentum regimes.

Abstract

We compute the inclusive unpolarized dihadron production cross section in the far from back-to-back region of $e^+ e^-$ annihilation in leading order pQCD using existing fragmentation function fits and standard collinear factorization, focusing on the large transverse momentum region where transverse momentum is comparable to the hard scale (the center-of-mass energy). We compare with standard transverse-momentum-dependent (TMD) fragmentation function-based predictions intended for the small transverse momentum region with the aim of testing the expectation that the two types of calculation roughly coincide at intermediate transverse momentum. We find significant tension, within the intermediate transverse momentum region, between calculations done with existing non-perturbative TMD fragmentation functions and collinear factorization calculations if the center-of-mass energy is not extremely large. We argue that $e^+ e^-$ measurements are ideal for resolving this tension and exploring the large-to-small transverse momentum transition, given the typically larger hard scales ($\gtrsim 10$ GeV) of the process as compared with similar scenarios that arise in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering and fixed-target Drell-Yan measurements.