PDFs, αs\alpha_s, and quark masses from global fits

The strong coupling constant $\alpha_s$ and the heavy-quark masses, $m_c$, $m_b$, $m_t$ are extracted simultaneosly with the parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the updated ABM12 fit including recent data from CERN-SPS, HERA, Tevatron, and the LHC. The values of \begin{eqnarray} \nonumber \alpha_s(M_Z)&=&0.1147\pm0.0008~({\rm exp.)},\\ \nonumber m_c(m_c)&=&1.252\pm 0.018~({\rm exp.})~{\rm GeV},\\ \nonumber m_b(m_b)&=&3.83\pm0.12~({\rm exp.})~{\rm GeV},\\ \nonumber m_t(m_t)&=&160.9\pm1.1~({\rm exp.})~{\rm GeV} \end{eqnarray} are obtained with the $\overline{MS}$ heavy-quark mass definition being employed throughout the analysis.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures; preprint number correcte

Iso-spin asymmetry of quark distributions and implications for single top-quark production at the LHC

We present an improved determination of the up- and down-quark distributions in the proton using recent data on charged lepton asymmetries from $W^\pm$ gauge-boson production at the LHC and Tevatron. The analysis is performed in the framework of a global fit of parton distribution functions. The fit results are consistent with a non-zero iso-spin asymmetry of the sea, $x(\bar d - \bar u)$, at small values of Bjorken $x\sim 10^{-4}$ indicating a delayed onset of the Regge asymptotics of a vanishing $(\bar d - \bar u)$-asymmetry at small-$x$. We compare with up- and down-quark distributions available in the literature and provide accurate predictions for the production of single top-quarks at the LHC, a process which can serve as a standard candle for the light quark flavor content of the proton.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figure

HECTOR 1.00 - A program for the calculation of QED, QCD and electroweak corrections to ep and lN deep inelastic neutral and charged current scattering

A description of the Fortran program HECTOR for a variety of semi-analytical calculations of radiative QED, QCD, and electroweak corrections to the double-differential cross sections of NC and CC deep inelastic charged lepton proton (or lepton deuteron) scattering is presented. HECTOR originates from the substantially improved and extended earlier programs HELIOS and TERAD91. It is mainly intended for applications at HERA or LEPxLHC, but may be used also for muon scattering in fixed target experiments. The QED corrections may be calculated in different sets of variables: leptonic, hadronic, mixed, Jaquet-Blondel, double angle etc. Besides the leading logarithmic approximation up to order O(alpha^2), exact order O(alpha) corrections and inclusive soft photon exponentiation are taken into account. The photoproduction region is also covered.Comment: 74 pages, LaTex, 14 figures, 7 tables, a uuencoded file containing the latex file and figures is available from: http://www.ifh.de/theory/ or on request from e-mail: [email protected]

Heavy-flavor PDF evolution and variable-flavor number scheme uncertainties in deep-inelastic scattering

We consider a detailed account on the construction of the heavy-quark parton distribution functions for charm and bottom, starting from $n_f=3$ light flavors in the fixed-flavor number (FFN) scheme and by using the standard decoupling relations for heavy quarks in QCD. We also account for two-mass effects. Furthermore, different implementations of the variable-flavor-number (VFN) scheme in deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) are studied, with the particular focus on the resummation of large logarithms in $Q^2/m_h^2$, the ratio the virtuality of the exchanged gauge-boson $Q^2$ to the heavy-quark mass squared $m_h^2$. A little impact of resummation effects if found in the kinematic range of the existing data on the DIS charm-quark production so that they can be described very well within the FFN scheme. Finally, we study the theoretical uncertainties associated to the VFN scheme, which manifest predominantly at small $Q^2$.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figure

Heavy flavour contributions to the deep inelastic sum rules

We have calculated the first and second order corrections to several deep inelastic sum rules which are due to heavy flavour contributions. A comparison is made with the existing perturbation series which has been computed up to third order for massless quarks only. In general it turns out that the effects of heavy quarks are very small except when $Q \sim m$ or $Q \gg m$. Here $Q$ and $m$ denote the virtual mass of the vector boson and the mass of the heavy quark, respectively. For $Q \gg m$ the radiative corrections reveal large logarithms of the type $\ln Q^2/m^2$ which have to be absorbed in the running coupling constant so that the number of light flavours $n_f$ is enhanced by one unit. However this has to happen at much larger values of Q i.e. $Q \sim 6.5~ m$ than one usually assumes for the flavour thresholds which appear in the running coupling constant. An alternative description for the heavy flavour dependence of the running coupling constant in the context of the MOM-scheme is discussed.Comment: 12 pages Latex, all compressed by uufile

Resummation of large logarithms in the VFN scheme for DIS heavy-quark production

We consider the impact of the resummation of large logarithms, which appear in the QCD evolution of the heavy-quark distributions, on the phenomenology of deep-inelastic heavy-quark production. The heavy-quark PDFs are derived using the fixed-order matching conditions as a boundary for the QCD evolution and the result obtained is compared to the distributions defined by the matching conditions at all scales. With such an approach, the effect of heavy-quark PDF evolution is found to be sizable at LO and dramatically reduces at NLO. The NNLO evolved distributions are not very different from the NLO ones at large scales, however, show substantial differences at low virtualities, i.e. where the additional large logarithms are numerically not important, while a mismatch between the NLO accuracy of the matching conditions and the NNLO accuracy in the evolution kernels causes a substantial excess in the heavy-quark distributions. This excess propagates into the variable flavor number (VFN) scheme predictions for the deep-inelastic structure functions and has to be compensated by a decrease in the small-$x$ gluon distribution determined from PDF fits based on the VFN scheme, which should be considered as a theoretical uncertainty in VFN PDF fits and reaches $\sim 30\%$ for the small-$x$ gluon distribution extracted from the data on deep-inelastic charm-quark production.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, proceedings of XXVII International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects (DIS2018), 8-12 Apr, Torino (Italy