Evolution of color exchange in QCD hard scattering

Abstract In QCD hard scattering cross sections, the color content of the underlying hard scattering evolves with a factorization scale. This evolution is controlled by an anomalous dimension matrix, specific to each hard-scattering reaction. Anomalous dimensions are determined from the renormalization of products of ordered exponentials of the gauge field, which describe the coherent radiation of gluons by incoming hadrons and the observed jets or particles of the final state. The anomalous dimensions depend on the kinematics of the underlying hard scattering, but are free of collinear singularities. A number of these matrices are available in the literature. Here, we exhibit one-loop mixing matrices for the full list of 2 → 2 reactions involving light quarks and gluons. The eight-by-eight anomalous dimension matrix for gluon-gluon scattering shows a simplified structure in the basis corresponding to definite color exchange in the t -channel.