Perturbative hysteresis and emergent resummation scales

Abstract

We investigate hysteresis effects in the perturbative solution of renormalisation group equations (RGEs). We present examples for the QCD running coupling and proton's parton distribution functions (PDFs), relevant to precision physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and future collider experiments. We propose the use of resummation scales to take into account the theoretical uncertainties from the solution of the RGEs. As a case study, we consider the $F_2$ structure function in a region relevant to the extraction of PDFs.

Comments: 4 pages + references, 6 figures