Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: We compute the leading probability for a gluon to flip helicity state upon traversing a background plane wave gauge field in pure Yang-Mills theory and QCD, with an arbitrary number of colours and flavours. This is a one-loop calculation in perturbative gauge theory around the gluonic plane wave background, which is treated without approximation (i.e., to all orders in the coupling). We introduce a background-dressed version of the spinor helicity formalism and use it to obtain simple formulae for the flip amplitude with pure external gluon polarizations. We also give in-depth examples for gauge group SU(2), and evaluate both the high- and low-energy limits. Throughout, we compare and contrast with the calculation of photon helicity flip in strong-field QED.
Source: Journal of High Energy Physics
Authors: Tim Adamo, Anton Ilderton
Institutions: Imperial College London, University of Plymouth
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Funder: Imperial College London
OpenAlex ID: W2950220162