Quark contribution to the small-$x$ evolution of color dipole

Abstract

The small-$x$ deep inelastic scattering in the saturation region is governed by the non-linear evolution of Wilson-lines operators. In the leading logarithmic approximation it is given by the BK equation for the evolution of color dipoles. In the NLO the nonlinear equation gets contributions from quark and gluon loops. In this paper I calculate the quark-loop contribution to small-x evolution of Wilson lines in the NLO. It turns out that there are no new operators at the one-loop level - just as at the tree level, the high-energy scattering can be described in terms of Wilson lines. In addition, from the analysis of quark loops I find that the argument of coupling constant in the BK equation is determined by the size of the parent dipole rather than by the size of produced dipoles. These results are to be supported by future calculation of gluon loops.