Four-loop results on anomalous dimensions and splitting functions in QCD

We report on recent progress on the flavour non-singlet splitting functions in perturbative QCD. The~exact four-loop (N^3LO) contribution to these functions has been obtained in the planar limit of a large number of colours. Phenomenologically sufficient approximate expressions have been obtained for the parts not exactly known so far. Both cases include results for the four-loop cusp and virtual anomalous dimensions which are relevant well beyond the evolution of non-singlet quark distributions, for which an accuracy of (well) below 1% has now been been reached.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX (PoS style), 4 eps-figures. Contribution to the proceedings of `RADCOR 2017', St. Gilgen (Austria), September 201

First Forcer results on deep-inelastic scattering and related quantities

We present results on the fourth-order splitting functions and coefficient functions obtained using Forcer, a four-loop generalization of the Mincer program for the parametric reduction of self-energy integrals. We have computed the respective lowest three even-N and odd-N moments for the non-singlet splitting functions and the non-singlet coefficient functions in electromagnetic and nu+nu(bar) charged-current deep-inelastic scattering, and the N=2 and N=4 results for the corresponding flavour-singlet quantities. Enough moments have been obtained for an LLL-based determination of the analytic N-dependence of the nf^3 and nf^2 parts, respectively, of the singlet and non-singlet splitting functions. The large-N limit of the latter provides the complete nf^2 contributions to the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension. Our results also provide additional evidence of a non-vanishing contribution of quartic group invariants to the cusp anomalous dimension.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX (PoS style), 4 eps-figures. To appear in the proceedings of `Loops & Legs 2016', Leipzig (Germany), April 201

Anomalous dimensions and splitting functions beyond the next-to-next-to-leading order

We report on recent progress on the splitting functions for the evolution of parton distributions and related quantities, the (lightlike) cusp anomalous dimensions, in perturbative QCD. New results are presented for the four-loop (next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order, N^3LO) contributions to the flavour-singlet splitting functions and the gluon cusp anomalous dimension. We present first results, the moments N=2 and N=3, for the five-loop (N^4LO) non-singlet splitting functions.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX (PoS style), 3 eps-figures. Contribution to the proceedings of `Loops & Legs 2018', St. Goar (Germany), April/May 201

On Higgs decays to hadrons and the R-ratio at (NLO)-L-4

We present the first determination of Higgs-boson decay to hadrons at the next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order of perturbative QCD in the limit of a heavy top quark and massless light flavours. This result has been obtained by computing the absorptive parts of the relevant five-loop self-energy for a general gauge group and combining the outcome with the corresponding coefficient function already known to this order in QCD. Our new result reduces the uncertainty due to the truncation of the perturbation series to a fraction of the uncertainty due to the present error of the strong coupling constant. We have also performed the corresponding but technically simpler computations for direct Higgs decay to bottom quarks and for the electromagnetic R-ratio in e^+ e^- -> hadrons, thus verifying important fifth-order results obtained so far only by one group.Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX, 2 axodraw2 and 4 eps figures. FORM files of the main results available with the source. v2: version accepted by JHEP: introduction and summary slightly extended, minor other text changes, a few additional reference

Four-loop QCD propagators and vertices with one vanishing external momentum

We have computed the self-energies and a set of three-particle vertex functions for massless QCD at the four-loop level in the MSbar renormalization scheme. The vertex functions are evaluated at points where one of the momenta vanishes. Analytical results are obtained for a generic gauge group and with the full gauge dependence, which was made possible by extensive use of the Forcer program for massless four-loop propagator integrals. The bare results in dimensional regularization are provided in terms of master integrals and rational coefficients; the latter are exact in any space-time dimension. Our results can be used for further precision investigations of the perturbative behaviour of the theory in schemes other than MSbar. As an example, we derive the five-loop beta function in a relatively common alternative, the minimal momentum subtraction (MiniMOM) scheme.Comment: 50 pages, 4 figures, 15 ancillary files available with the source; v2: minor changes, version accepted by JHE

Four-loop non-singlet splitting functions in the planar limit and beyond

We present the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N3LO) contributions to the non-singlet splitting functions for both parton distribution and fragmentation functions in perturbative QCD. The exact expressions are derived for the terms contributing in the limit of a large number of colours. For the remaining contributions, approximations are provided that are sufficient for all collider-physics applications. From their threshold limits we derive analytical and high-accuracy numerical results, respectively, for all contributions to the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension for quarks, including the terms proportional to quartic Casimir operators. We briefly illustrate the numerical size of the four-loop corrections, and the remarkable renormalization-scale stability of the N3LO results, for the evolution of the non-singlet parton distribution and the fragmentation functions. Our results appear to provide a first point of contact of four-loop QCD calculations and the so-called wrapping corrections to anomalous dimensions in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory

FORM, diagrams and topologies

© Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons. We discuss a number of FORM features that are essential in the automatic processing of very large numbers of diagrams as used in the Forcer program for 4-loop massless propagator diagrams. Most of these features are new

Numerical Methods and the 4-point 2-loop Higgs amplitudes

Some of the difficulties faced when calculating multi-loop amplitudes with several mass scales are reviewed. We then focus on one particular difficulty, the evaluation of the Feynman integrals, and introduce the program pySecDec which can be used to numerically compute such integrals. Some of the new features and in particular the sector symmetry finder, which can help to reduce the number of sectors to be numerically integrated after sector decomposition, are described.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the proceedings of `ACAT 2017', Seattle (USA), August 201

On quartic colour factors in splitting functions and the gluon cusp anomalous dimension

We have computed the contributions of the quartic Casimir invariants to the four-loop anomalous dimensions of twist-2 spin-N operators at N =< 16. The results provide new information on the structure of the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N^3LO) splitting functions P_{ik}^(3)(x) for the evolution of parton distributions, and facilitate approximate expressions which include the quartic-Casimir contributions to the (light-like) gluon cusp anomalous dimension. These quantities turn out to be closely related, by a generalization of the lower-order `Casimir scaling', to the corresponding quark results. Using these findings, we present an approximate result for the four-loop gluon cusp anomalous dimension in QCD which is sufficient for phenomenological applications.Comment: 12 pages, LaTe