Scattering amplitudes in high energy QCD -: art. no. 054016

We develop a new systematic procedure for the Regge limit in perturbative QCD to arbitrary logarithmic order. The formalism relies on the IR structure and the gauge symmetry of the theory. We identify the leading regions in loop momentum space responsible for the singular structure of the amplitudes and perform power counting to determine the strength of these divergences. Using a factorization procedure introduced by Sen, we derive a sum of convolutions in transverse momentum space over soft and jet functions, which approximate the amplitude up to power-suppressed corrections. A set of evolution equations generalizing the BFKL equation and controlling the high energy behavior of the amplitudes to arbitrary logarithmic accuracy is derived. The general method is illustrated in the case of leading logarithmic gluon Reggeization and the BFKL equation.