The renormalization group equation for the color glass condensate

We present an explicit and simple form of the renormalization group equation which governs the quantum evolution of the effective theory for the Color Class Condensate (CGC). This is a functional Fokker-Planck equation for the probability density of the color field which describes the CGC in the covariant gauge. It is equivalent to the Euclidean time evolution equation for a second quantized current-current Hamiltonian in two spatial dimensions. The quantum corrections are included in the leading log approximation, but the equation is fully non-linear with respect to the generally strong background field. In the weak field limit, it reduces to the BFKL equation, while in the general non-linear case it generates the evolution equations for Wilson-line operators previously derived by Balitsky and Kovchegov within perturbative QCD. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.