On the non-cancellation of infrared singularities in collisions of massive quarks
/ Authors
/ Abstract
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.