Quantitative study of the transverse correlation of soft gluons in high energy QCD

We examine both analytically and numerically the validity of factorization for the double dipole scattering amplitude T^{(2)} which appears on the right hand side of the BK--JIMWLK equation. We demonstrate that, if one uses a dilute object (e.g., a proton in DIS) as the initial condition, the correlation in the transverse plane induced by the leading order BFKL evolution is generally strong, resulting in a violation of the mean field approximation T^{(2)} \approx TT even at zero impact parameter by a factor ranging from 1.5 to O(10) depending on the relative size of the scatterers and rapidity. This suggests that, within the experimentally accessible energy interval, the transverse correlation can significantly affect the nonlinear evolution of the dipole scattering amplitude. It also suggests that the nonlinear effects may set in earlier, already in the weak scattering regime. In the case of the simulation with a running coupling, the violation of factorization is somewhat milder, but still noticeable.