These lectures provide an introduction to Soft-Collinear Effective
theory (SCET), the effective theory relevant for processes involving large
energies and small invariant masses. SCET allows one to study
soft-collinear factorization on the operator level and to resum
logarithmically enhanced contributions to cross sections using RG
evolution in the effective theory.
I will first discuss the strategy of regions technique to perform
asymptotic expansions of loop integrals around various limits. There
is a one-to-one correspondence between this method and effective
theories in dimensional regularization. Based on this correspondence
we then construct the effective Lagrangian and establish the power
counting of the different fields. In the third lecture we'll apply the
effective field theory to a problem with two directions of large
momentum flow and illustrate how RG-evolution can be used to resum
logarithmically enhanced contributions. In the last lecture, we
discuss recent progress towards the analysis of processes with
energetic partons in multiple directions. To perform resummations for
such processes, one needs to understand the infrared singularities of
n-point amplitudes. The effective theory treatment shows that these
singularities can be analyzed with RG methods and that there are strong constraints on the corresponding anomalous dimension.
This series of lectures was part of the workshop "The Infrared Structure of Gauge Theories" at ETH Zurich, February 1-12, 2010. The sildes are linked below.