High-energy evolution in planar QCD to three loops: the non-conformal contribution

Abstract

The Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK) equation offers a tractable description of the high-energy growth of gauge-theory scattering amplitudes and the nonlinear saturation effects that eventually tame it. Motivated by the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), whose extended kinematic reach promises more decisive tests of saturation at high energies, we present a framework based on the spacelike-timelike correspondence that streamlines the computation of multi-loop corrections to the BK equation. We explicitly verify the correspondence at three loops in the large-flavor limit and predict the full nonconformal component of the three-loop BK Hamiltonian in the planar limit of a generic gauge theory, treating the numbers of fermions and scalars as free parameters.