Jet Physics from Static Charges in AdS

Abstract

Soft interactions with high-energy jets are explored in radial coordinates which exploit the approximately conformal behavior of perturbative gauge theories. In these coordinates, the jets, approximated by Wilson lines, become static charges in Euclidean AdS. The anomalous dimension of the corresponding Wilson line operator is then determined by the potential energy of the charges. To study these Wilson lines we introduce a "conformal gauge" which does not have kinetic mixing between radial and angular directions, and show that a number of properties of Wilson lines are reproduced through relatively simple calculations. For example, certain non-planar graphs involving multiple Wilson lines automatically vanish. We also discuss the linear growth of the charges' imaginary potential energy with separation, and a relationship between Wilson line diagrams and Witten diagrams.