Universality of QCD traveling-waves with running coupling

Abstract

The Balitsky-Kovchegov QCD equation for rapidity evolution describing saturation effects at high energy admits universal asymptotic traveling-wave solutions when the nonlinear damping becomes effective. The asymptotic solutions fall in universality classes depending only on some specific properties of the solution of the associated linear equation. We derive these solutions for the recent QCD formulations of the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation with running coupling constant obtained from quark-loop calculation. While the associated linear solutions depend in different ways with observables and higher-order effects, we show that the asymptotic traveling-wave solutions all belong to the same universality class whose solutions are given. Hence the influence of saturation stabilizes the QCD evolution with respect to higher order effects and leads to universal features at high enough rapidity, such as the form of the traveling waves, the intercept of the saturation scale and geometric scaling in square-root of the rapidity.