DIS dijet production in Background Field Approach: General formalism and methods

Abstract

We develop a general formalism for computing physical observables within the background field approach, based on representing propagators of the Feynman diagrams in the background fields as path-ordered exponents. This representation allows systematic expansion of the background fields onto arbitrary linear piecewise contours in coordinate space, yielding gauge-covariant QCD operators to any required order of the expansion. We apply this formalism to DIS dijet production and derive a general form of the cross section in terms of (anti)quark propagators in the background fields, valid in arbitrary kinematics. To demonstrate the versatility of our approach, we consider two kinematic limits. In the back-to-back limit, the expansion contour reduces to that of TMD operators. In this limit we recover the known leading-power results. In the small-$x$ regime, defined by the high-energy power counting for boosted background fields, the expansion contour assumes a staple-like shape. We find that, at the leading eikonal order, the transverse component of the background field $B_i$, though parametrically suppressed relative to the light-cone component, contributes non-trivially through the field-strength tensor $F_{-i}$ and the transverse gauge links. Setting $B_i = 0$ recovers the standard CGC result. We also demonstrate matching between the eikonal and back-to-back expansions, providing a quantitative dictionary between these two distinct kinematic regimes.