Non-perturbative renormalization of the average color charge and multi-point correlators of color charge from a non-Gaussian small-$x$ action

Abstract

The McLerran-Venugopalan (MV) model is a Gaussian effective theory of color charge fluctuations at small-$x$ in the limit of large valence charge density, {\it i}.{\it e}., a large nucleus made of uncorrelated color charges. In this work, we explore the effects of the first non-trivial (even C-parity) non-Gaussian correction on the color charge density to the MV model ("quartic" term) in SU(2) and SU(3) color group in the non-perturbative regime. We compare our (numerical) non-perturbative results to (analytical) perturbative ones in the limit of small or large non-Gaussian fluctuations. The couplings in the non-Gaussian action, $\bar{\mu }$ for the quadratic and ${\kappa }_4$ for the quartic term, need to be renormalized in order to match the two-point function in the Gaussian theory. We investigate three different choices for the renormalization of these couplings: i) ${\kappa }_4$ is proportional to a power of $\bar{\mu }$; ii) ${\kappa }_4$ is kept constant and iii) $\bar{\mu }$ is kept constant. We find that the first two choices lead to a scenario where the small-$x$ action evolves towards a theory dominated by large non-Gaussian fluctuations, regardless of the system size, while the last one allows for controlling the deviations from the MV model.

Comments: v4: The right panel of figure 5 now shows the leading order result in the Z->0 region, in agreement with Eqs. (52) - (54) (now written for an arbitrary number of colors, Nc). Matches the published version