Singular terms of helicity amplitudes at one-loop in QCD and the soft limit of the cross sections of multi-parton processes

Abstract

We describe a general method that enables us to obtain all the singular terms of helicity amplitudes of n-parton processes at one loop. The algorithm uses helicity amplitudes at tree level and simple color algebra. We illustrate the method by calculating the singular part of the one loop helicity amplitudes of all $ 2\to 3$ parton subprocesses. The results are used to derive the soft gluon limit of the cross sections of all $2\to 4$ parton scattering subprocesses which provide a useful initial condition for the angular ordering approximation to coherent multiple soft gluon emission, incorporated in existing Monte Carlo simulation programs.