Abstract
We compute the leading probability for a gluon to flip helicity state upon traversing a background plane wave gauge field in pure Yang-Mills theory and QCD, with an arbitrary number of colours and flavours. This is a one-loop calculation in perturbative gauge theory around the gluonic plane wave background, which is treated without approximation (i.e., to all orders in the coupling). We introduce a background-dressed version of the spinor helicity formalism and use it to obtain simple formulae for the flip amplitude with pure external gluon polarizations. We also give in-depth examples for gauge group SU(2), and evaluate both the high- and low-energy limits. Throughout, we compare and contrast with the calculation of photon helicity flip in strong-field QED.
DOI
10.1007/JHEP06(2019)015
Publication Date
2019-06-06
Publication Title
Journal of High Energy Physics
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
ISSN
1029-8479
Embargo Period
2024-11-22
Additional Links
http://arxiv.org/abs/1903.01491v1
Keywords
hep-th, hep-th, hep-ph
Recommended Citation
Adamo, T., & Ilderton, A. (2019) 'Gluon helicity flip in a plane wave background', Journal of High Energy Physics, . Springer Berlin Heidelberg: Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2019)015
Comments
33 pages, 4 pdf figures