Analyticity of QCD observables beyond leading-order perturbation theory

Abstract

A theoretical framework is presented to treat hadronic observables within analytic perturbative QCD beyond the leading order of the coupling and for more than one single large momentum scale. The approach generalizes and extends the pioneering work of Shirkov and Solovtsov on an analytic strong running coupling. Some applications to hadronic observables at the partonic level are also discussed.