Nonperturbative Effects in Energy Correlators: From Characterizing Confinement Transition to Improving $\alpha_s$ Extraction

TL;DR

This paper shows that universal nonperturbative corrections improve theoretical predictions of energy correlators in QCD, aiding in understanding confinement and refining the extraction of the strong coupling constant, lpha_s.

Contribution

It demonstrates the universality of leading nonperturbative corrections across energy correlators and their impact on lpha_s extraction, enhancing theoretical accuracy.

Findings

Universal nonperturbative parameter describes corrections for all N-point correlators.

Including nonperturbative corrections improves predictions near the confinement transition.

Nonperturbative effects significantly influence lpha_s extraction accuracy.

Abstract

Energy correlators provide a powerful observable to study fragmentation dynamics in QCD. We demonstrate that the leading nonperturbative corrections for projected $N$-point energy correlators are described by the same universal parameter for any $N$, which has already been determined from other event shape fits. Including renormalon-free nonperturbative corrections substantially improves theoretical predictions of energy correlators, notably the transition into the confining region at small angles. Nonperturbative corrections are shown to have a significant impact on $\alpha_s$ extractions.