Conformal invariant saturation

Abstract

We show that, in onium-onium scattering at (very) high energy, a transition to saturation happens due to quantum fluctuations of QCD dipoles. This transition starts when the order $α^2$ correction of the dipole loop is compensated by its faster energy evolution, leading to a negative interference with the tree level amplitude. After a derivation of the the one-loop dipole contribution using conformal invariance of the elastic 4-gluon amplitude in high energy QCD, we obtain an exact expression of the saturation line in the plane (Y,L) where Y is the total rapidity and L, the logarithm of the onium scale ratio. It shows universal features implying the Balitskyi - Fadin - Kuraev - Lipatov (BFKL) evolution kernel and the square of the QCD triple Pomeron vertex. For large L, only the higher BFKL Eigenvalue contributes, leading to a saturation depending on leading log perturbative QCD characteristics. For initial onium scales of same order, however, it involves an unlimited summation over all conformal BFKL Eigenstates. In all cases, conformal invariance is preserved for the saturation mechanism based on dipole loops.