A Langevin equation for high-energy evolution with pomeron loops Original Research Article

We show that the Balitsky–JIMWLK equations proposed to describe non-linear evolution in QCD at high energy fail to include the effects of fluctuations in the gluon number, and thus to correctly describe both the low-density regime and the approach towards saturation. On the other hand, these fluctuations are correctly encoded (in the limit where the number of colors is large) in Muellerʹs color dipole picture, which, however, neglects saturation. By combining the dipole picture at low density with the JIMWLK evolution at high density, we construct a generalization of the Balitsky hierarchy which includes the particle number fluctuations, and thus the pomeron loops. After an additional coarse-graining in impact parameter space, this hierarchy is shown to reduce to a Langevin equation in the universality class of the stochastic Fisher–Kolmogorov–Petrovsky–Piscounov (sFKPP) equation. This equation implies that the non-linear effects in the evolution become important already in the high-momentum regime where the average density is small, which signals the breakdown of the BFKL approximation.