Brodsky-Lepage-Mackenzie optimal renormalization scale setting for semihard processes.

The Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov (BFKL) approach for the investigation of semihard processes is plagued by large next-to-leading corrections, both in the kernel of the universal BFKL Green's function and in the process-dependent impact factors, as well as by large uncertainties in the renormalization scale setting. All that calls for an optimization procedure of the perturbative series. In this respect, one of the most common methods is the Brodsky-Lepage-Mackenzie (BLM) one, which eliminates the renormalization scale ambiguity by absorbing the nonconformal β0 terms into the running coupling. In this paper, we apply the BLM scale setting procedure directly to the amplitudes (cross sections) of several semihard processes. We show that, due to the presence of β0 terms in the next-to-leading expressions for the impact factors, the optimal renormalization scale is not universal but depends both on the energy and on the type of process in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]