Towards a fitting procedure for deeply virtual Compton scattering at next-to-leading order and beyond

Combining dispersion and operator product expansion techniques, we derive the conformal partial wave decomposition of the virtual Compton scattering amplitude in terms of complex conformal spin to twist-two accuracy. The perturbation theory predictions for the deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) amplitude are presented in next-to-leading order for both conformal and modified minimal subtraction scheme. Within a conformal subtraction scheme, where we exploit predictive power of conformal symmetry, the radiative corrections are presented up to next-to-next-to-leading order accuracy. Here, because of the trace anomaly, the mixing of conformal moments of generalized parton distributions (GPD) at the three-loop level remains unknown. Within a new proposed parameterization for GPDs, we then study the convergence of perturbation theory and demonstrate that our formalism is suitable for a fitting procedure of DVCS observables. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.