Sudakov effects in photon-initiated processes
Lucian A. Harland-Lang, Valery A. Khoze, M. G. Ryskin · Physics Letters B · 2016
We consider the effect of the Sudakov factor in photon-initiated processes, corresponding to the no branching probability for the initial-state photon. We demonstrate how such a factor follows simply from the solution of the DGLAP equation for the photon PDF , and is therefore included automatically by this. We use this result to argue that the appropriate scale for the QED coupling α associated with an initial-state photon is not the virtuality of the photon, but rather the factorization scale at which the photon PDF is evaluated, and therefore that the use of the on-shell renormalization scheme is not appropriate for such processes. We also discuss exclusive photon-initiated processes, and demonstrate that no explicit Sudakov factor is required in this case.