Unitarity Corrections and High Field Strengths in High Energy Hard Collisions

Abstract

Unitarity corrections to the BFKL description of high energy hard scattering are viewed in large $N_c$ QCD in light-cone quantization. In a center of mass frame unitarity corrections to high energy hard scattering are manifestly perturbatively calculable and unrelated to questions of parton saturation. In a frame where one of the hadrons is initially at rest unitarity corrections are related to parton saturation effects and involve potential strengths $A_μ\sim 1/g.$ In such a frame we describe the high energy scattering in terms of the expectation value of a Wilson loop. The large potentials $A_μ\sim 1/g$ are shown to be pure gauge terms allowing perturbation theory to again describe unitarity corrections and parton saturation effects. Genuine nonperturbative effects only come in at energies well beyond those energies where unitarity constraints first become important.