The remarkably high energies of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have allowed for the first measurements of the shapes and scalings of multipoint correlators of energy flow operators, $⟨\mathrm{\Psi }|\mathcal{E}({\overrightarrow{n}}_1)\mathcal{E}({\overrightarrow{n}}_2)\cdots \mathcal{E}({\overrightarrow{n}}_k)|\mathrm{\Psi }⟩$, providing new insights into the Lorentzian dynamics of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In this letter, we use recent advances in effective field theory to derive a rigorous factorization theorem for the light-ray density matrix, $\rho =|\mathrm{\Psi }⟩⟨\mathrm{\Psi }|$, inside high transverse momentum jets at the LHC. Using the light-ray operator product expansion, the scaling behavior of multipoint correlators can be computed from the expectation value of the twist-2 spin-$J$ light-ray operators, ${\mathbb{O}}^{[J]}$, in this state, $\mathrm{Tr}[\rho {\mathbb{O}}^{[J]}]$. We compute the light-ray density matrix at next-to-leading order, and combine this with results for the next-to-leading logarithmic scaling behavior of the correlators up to six-points, comparing with CMS open data. This theoretical accuracy allows us to resolve the quantum scaling dimensions of QCD light-ray operators inside jets at the LHC. Our factorization theorem for the light-ray density matrix at the LHC completes the link between recent developments in the study of energy correlators and LHC phenomenology, opening the door to a wide variety of precision jet substructure studies.

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• Perturbative QCD
• Quark & gluon jets
• Resummation methods
• Conformal symmetry