Paper detail

Drell-Yan process with jet vetoes: breaking of generalized factorization

Resummation of hadron collision cross sections, when the measurement imposes a hierarchy of scales, relies on factorization. Cancellation of Glauber / Coulomb gluons is a necessary condition for factorization. For Drell-Yan-like processes, the known proofs of cancellation of Glauber gluons are not applicable when jet vetoes are introduced, via jet algorithms or event shape variables such as the beam thrust. A priori, this does not rule out the possibility that an unknown new cancellation mechanism exists, or the possibility that a generalized factorization formalism is correct. To resolve the questions, we construct a direct counter-example in QCD with scalar quarks, contradicting any form of factorization in which the two collinear sectors are decoupled from each other. In the counter-example, decoupling of the two collinear sectors implies zero dependence of the beam thrust distribution on the longitudinal spin of the incoming hadrons, but we find a non-zero spin asymmetry at leading power due to Glauber gluons exchanged between spectators. We discuss implications for resumming large logarithms from jet vetoes.