Progress on soft gluon exponentiation and long-distance singularities

Abstract: I review the recent progress in studying long-distance singularities in gauge-theory scattering amplitudes in terms of Wilson lines. The non-Abelian exponentiation theorem, which has been recently generalised to the case of multi-leg amplitudes, states that diagrams exponentiate such that the colour factors in the exponent are fully connected. After a brief review of the diagrammatic approach to soft gluon exponentiation, I sketch the method we used to prove the theorem and illustrate how connected colour factors emerge in the exponent in webs that are formed by sets of multiple-gluon-exchange diagrams. In the second part of the talk I report on recent progress in evaluating the corresponding integrals, where a major simplification is achieved upon formulating the calculation in terms of subtracted webs. I argue that the contributions of all multiple-gluon-exchange diagrams to the soft anomalous dimension take the form of products of specific polylogarithmic functions, each depending on a single cusp angle.