Isolating Prompt Photons with Narrow Cones

Abstract: We discuss the isolation of prompt photons in hadronic collisions by means of narrow isolation cones and the QCD computation of the corresponding cross sections. We reconsider the occurence of large perturbative terms with logarithmic dependence on the cone size and their impact on the fragmentation scale dependence. We cure the apparent perturbative violation of unitarity for small cone sizes, which had been noticed earlier in next-to-leading-order (NLO) calculations, by resumming the leading logarithmic dependence on the cone size. We discuss possible implications regarding the implementation of some hollow cone variants of the cone criterion, which simulate the experimental difficulty to impose isolation inside the region filled by the electromagnetic shower that develops in the calorimeter.