Fracture Functions in Different Kinematic Regions and Their Factorizations

Abstract

Fracture functions are parton distributions of an initial hadron in the presence of an almost collinear particle observed in the final state. They are important ingredients in QCD factorization for processes where a particle is produced diffractively. There are different fracture functions for a process in different kinematic regions. We take the production of a lepton pair combined with a diffractively produced particle in hadron collisions to discuss this. Those fracture functions can be factorized further if there are large energy scales involved. They can be factorized with twist-2 parton distribution functions and fragmentation functions. We perform one-loop calculations to illustrate the factorization in the case with the diffractively produced particle as a real photon. Evolution equations of different fracture functions are derived from our explicit calculations. They agree with expectations. These equations can be used for re-summations of large log terms in perturbative expansions.