The Infrared Behavior of One-Loop Gluon Amplitudes at Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order

Abstract

For the case of $n$-jet production at next-to-next-to-leading order in the QCD coupling, in the infrared divergent corners of phase space where particles are collinear or soft, one must evaluate $(n+1)$-parton final-state one-loop amplitudes through $\Ord(\eps^2)$, where $\eps$ is the dimensional regularization parameter. For the case of gluons, we present to all orders in $\eps$ the required universal functions which describe the behavior of one-loop amplitudes in the soft and collinear regions of phase space. An explicit example is discussed for three-parton production in multi-Regge kinematics that has applications to the next-to-leading logarithmic corrections to the BFKL equation.