Hunting stabilization effects of the high-energy resummation at the LHC

Abstract

Studying semi-hard processes in the large center-of-mass energy limit gives us an opportunity to further test perturbative QCD in an unexplored kinematical configuration, contributing to a better understanding of the dynamics of strong interactions. For semi-hard reactions in kinematics at large center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}$, the BFKL resummation of energy logarithms comes into play, since large energy logarithms compensate the smallness of QCD coupling $α_s$ and must therefore be accounted for to all perturbative orders. Tracing the path toward performing precision calculations via BFKL resummation of high-energy logarithms, in this thesis we present phenomenological analyses for distinct inclusive processes, highlighting the recognized problem of instabilities under higher-order corrections and energy-scales variations, that would abort any possibility to investigate semi-hard reactions with high-precision at natural energy-scales. At the same time, we present new reactions that seem to act as fair stabilizers of the high-energy series. First, the inclusive production at the LHC of a charged light hadron and of a jet, featuring a wide separation in rapidity, is presented making use of optimization methods to fix energy-scale. We report some predictions, tailored on the CMS and CASTOR acceptances. Then, we propose as a novel probe channel for the manifestation of the BFKL dynamics, the inclusive hadroproduction of a Higgs boson and of a jet, featuring large transverse momenta and well separated in rapidity. Finlay, we propose the inclusive semi-hard production of two bottom-flavored hadrons, as well as of a single bottom-flavored hadron accompanied by a light jet, as novel channels for targeting stabilization effects of the high-energy resummation under higher-order corrections.