NLO evolution of color dipoles in N=4 SYM

Abstract

High-energy behavior of amplitudes in a gauge theory can be reformulated in terms of the evolution of Wilson-line operators. In the leading logarithmic approximation it is given by the conformally invariant BK equation for the evolution of color dipoles. In QCD, the next-to-leading order BK equation has both conformal and non-conformal parts, the latter providing the running of the coupling constant. To separate the conformally invariant effects from the running-coupling effects, we calculate the NLO evolution of the color dipoles in the conformal ${\cal N}$=4 SYM theory. We define the "composite dipole operators" with the rapidity cutoff preserving conformal invariance. The resulting M\"obius invariant kernel for these operators agrees with the forward NLO BFKL calculation of Ref. 1.