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Top Quark Production

Nikolaos Kidonakis

TL;DR

The paper develops a NNLL soft-gluon resummation framework for top-quark production in hadronic collisions, derived from factorization and renormalization-group evolution, and complements it with explicit two-loop calculations of soft anomalous dimensions in the eikonal approximation. It delivers NNLO approximate results for total cross sections and top-quark $p_T$ and rapidity distributions in $t\\bar t$ production, as well as NNLO approximate cross sections for single-top channels in the $t$- and $s$-channels, $tW^-$, and $tH^-$ associated production. The results, evaluated with MSTW2008 NNLO PDFs, show excellent agreement with Tevatron and LHC data and substantially reduced scale uncertainties, highlighting the predictive power of NNLO soft-gluon corrections. The work provides a robust methodology for precision cross sections and differential distributions, with implications for background modeling in Higgs and new-physics searches.

Abstract

I discuss top quark production in hadronic collisions. I present the soft-gluon resummation formalism and its derivation from factorization and renormalization-group evolution, and two-loop calculations of soft anomalous dimensions in the eikonal approximation. I discuss the contributions of next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) soft-gluon corrections to the total cross sections and top-quark transverse momentum and rapidity distributions for top-antitop pair production, and for single-top production in the $t$ and $s$ channels and in association with a $W$ boson or a charged Higgs boson.

Top Quark Production

TL;DR

The paper develops a NNLL soft-gluon resummation framework for top-quark production in hadronic collisions, derived from factorization and renormalization-group evolution, and complements it with explicit two-loop calculations of soft anomalous dimensions in the eikonal approximation. It delivers NNLO approximate results for total cross sections and top-quark and rapidity distributions in production, as well as NNLO approximate cross sections for single-top channels in the - and -channels, , and associated production. The results, evaluated with MSTW2008 NNLO PDFs, show excellent agreement with Tevatron and LHC data and substantially reduced scale uncertainties, highlighting the predictive power of NNLO soft-gluon corrections. The work provides a robust methodology for precision cross sections and differential distributions, with implications for background modeling in Higgs and new-physics searches.

Abstract

I discuss top quark production in hadronic collisions. I present the soft-gluon resummation formalism and its derivation from factorization and renormalization-group evolution, and two-loop calculations of soft anomalous dimensions in the eikonal approximation. I discuss the contributions of next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) soft-gluon corrections to the total cross sections and top-quark transverse momentum and rapidity distributions for top-antitop pair production, and for single-top production in the and channels and in association with a boson or a charged Higgs boson.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 21 sections, 77 equations, 25 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Higher-order soft-gluon corrections
  3. Factorization, RGE, and Resummation
  4. NLO and NNLO expansions
  5. Two-loop calculations for the massive cusp anomalous dimension
  6. One-loop cusp anomalous dimension
  7. Two-loop cusp anomalous dimension
  8. Soft anomalous dimension matrices for $t{\bar{t}}$ production
  9. Double-differential kinematics
  10. Kinematics with $S$, $T$, $U$
  11. Kinematics with $p_T$ and rapidity
  12. Total cross section for $t{\bar{t}}$ production
  13. Top-quark $p_T$ and rapidity distributions in $t{\bar{t}}$ production
  14. Top-quark $p_T$ distribution
  15. Top-quark rapidity distribution
  16. ...and 6 more sections

Figures (25)

  • Figure 1: Factorization of the partonic cross section for $t{\bar{t}}$ production: (a) The functions involved in the partonic process; (b) the soft-gluon function $S$.
  • Figure 2: Elementary eikonal diagram for soft-gluon emission from an outgoing quark.
  • Figure 3: One-loop eikonal diagrams for the cusp anomalous dimension.
  • Figure 4: One-loop vertex-correction diagram.
  • Figure 5: Two-loop vertex-correction diagrams for the cusp anomalous dimension.
  • ...and 20 more figures