SUBLEADING LOGARITHMS IN QCD HARD SCATTERING

We discuss the resummation of corrections from the elastic limit (part onic threshold) in hadronic QCD hard-scattering cross sections, such a s heavy quark production. We recall why these corrections can be large even at high orders in perturbation theory, and describe their resumm ation to arbitrary logarithmic accuracy, generalizing resummation in t he Drell-Yan and other electroweak processes. Resummation is based on the factorization of soft gluons, whose dynamics is then generated by gauge field path-ordered exponentials, linked by color-dependent verti ces. The renormalization of these composite vertices determines sublea ding logarithms. We illustrate our results for the case of heavy quark production by light quark annihilation.