On the non-cancellation of infrared singularities in collisions of massive quarks

We discuss the infrared structure of processes with massive quarks in the initial state. It is well known that, starting from next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD, such processes exhibit a violation of the Bloch-Nordsieck theorem, in that the sum of real and virtual contributions to partonic cross sections contains uncanceled infrared singularities. The main purpose of this paper is to present a simple physical argument that elucidates the origin of these singularities and simplifies the derivation of infrared-singular contributions to heavy-quark initiated cross sections.