On gauge invariance of transverse momentum dependent distributions at small x

Abstract

The interplay between the small x limit of QCD amplitudes and QCD factorization at moderate x has been studied extensively in recent years. It was finally shown that semiclassical formulations of small x physics can have the form of an infinite twist framework involving Transverse Momentum Dependent (TMD) distributions in the eikonal limit. In this work, we demonstrate that small x distributions can be formulated in terms of transverse gauge links. This allows in particular for direct and efficient decompositions of observables into subamplitudes involving gauge invariant sub-operators which span parton distributions.

Comments: 21 pages, 5 figures