A QCD dipole formalism for forward-gluon production

Abstract

We derive inclusive and diffractive forward-gluon production in the scattering of a $q\bar{q}$ dipole off an arbitrary target in the high-energy eikonal approximation, suitable to study the saturation regime. We show how the inclusive cross-section is related to the total cross-section for the scattering of a colorless pair of gluons on the target: the gluon-production cross-section can be expressed as a convolution between this $gg$ dipole total cross-section and a dipole distribution. We then consider as an application the forward-jet production from an incident hadron and describe forward-jet production at HERA and Mueller-Navelet jets at Tevatron or LHC. We show how these measurements are related to the $q\bar{q}-gg$ or $gg-gg$ dipole-dipole cross-sections and why they are therefore well-suited for studying high-energy scattering in QCD.