Dijet impact factor in DIS at next-to-leading order in the Color Glass Condensate

Abstract

We compute the next-to-leading order impact factor for inclusive dijet production in deeply inelastic electron-nucleus scattering at small $x_{\mathrm{Bj}}$. Our computation, performed in the framework of the Color Glass Condensate effective field theory, includes all real and virtual contributions in the gluon shock wave background of all-twist lightlike Wilson line correlators. We demonstrate explicitly that the rapidity evolution of these correlators, to leading logarithmic accuracy, is described by the JIMWLK Hamiltonian. When combined with the next-to-leading order JIMWLK Hamiltonian, our results for the impact factor improve the accuracy of the inclusive dijet cross section to $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_s^2\ln (x_f/x_{\mathrm{Bj}}))$, where $x_f$ is a rapidity factorization scale. These results are an essential ingredient in assessing the discovery potential of inclusive dijets to uncover the physics of gluon saturation at the Electron-Ion Collider.

Comments: v3: typos corrected post-publication, a list of these will be published separately as an Erratum. v2: matches the published version. v1: 112 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables