Asymptotic Series and Precocious Scaling

TL;DR

The paper reviews asymptotic series in QCD, demonstrating that keeping only the first few terms of divergent series can accurately approximate physical phenomena like e^+e^- annihilation, explaining precocious scaling.

Contribution

It provides a heuristic proof that divergent QCD series are asymptotic and shows the practical effectiveness of truncating series at low energies.

Findings

First few terms approximate the series within 1% at low momenta

Explains the success of leading order corrections in QCD

Supports the concept of precocious scaling

Abstract

Some of the basic concepts regarding asymptotic series are reviewed. A heuristic proof is given that the divergent QCD perturbation series is asymptotic. By treating it as an asymptotic expansion we show that it makes sense to keep only the first few terms. The example of e^+e^- annihilation is considered. It is shown that by keeping only the first few terms one can get within a per cent (or smaller) of the complete sum of the series even at very low momenta where the coupling is large. More generally, this affords an explanation of the phenomena of precocious scaling and why keeping only leading order corrections generally works so well.