Light fermionic NNLO QCD corrections to top-antitop production in the quark-antiquark channel

We present the NNLO corrections to top pair production in the quark-antiquark channel proportional to the number of light quark flavors $N_l$. While the double real corrections were derived previously, here we compute the real-virtual and virtual-virtual contributions in this partonic channel. Using the antenna subtraction formalism, we show that the subtraction terms correctly approximate the real-virtual contributions in all their infrared limits. Combined with the integrated forms of the double real and real-virtual subtraction terms, we show analytically that the explicit infrared poles cancel at the real-virtual and virtual-virtual levels respectively, thereby demonstrating the validity of the massive extension of the NNLO antenna formalism. These NNLO corrections are implemented in a Monte Carlo parton level generator providing full kinematical information on an event-by event basis. With this program, NNLO differential distributions in the form of binned histograms are obtained and presented here.Comment: 42 pages, 8 figure

Single-inclusive jet production in electron-nucleon collisions through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD

We compute the ${\cal O}(\alpha^2\alpha_s^2)$ perturbative corrections to inclusive jet production in electron-nucleon collisions. This process is of particular interest to the physics program of a future Electron Ion Collider (EIC). We include all relevant partonic processes, including deep-inelastic scattering contributions, photon-initiated corrections, and parton-parton scattering terms that first appear at this order. Upon integration over the final-state hadronic phase space we validate our results for the deep-inelastic corrections against the known next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) structure functions. Our calculation uses the $N$-jettiness subtraction scheme for performing higher-order computations, and allows for a completely differential description of the deep-inelastic scattering process. We describe the application of this method to inclusive jet production in detail, and present phenomenological results for the proposed EIC. The NNLO corrections have a non-trivial dependence on the jet kinematics and arise from an intricate interplay between all contributing partonic channels.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Top quark pair production at NNLO in the quark-antiquark channel

We present the derivation of the NNLO two-parton final state contributions to top pair production in the quark-antiquark channel proportionnal to the leading colour factor $N_c^2$. Together with the three and four-parton NNLO contributions presented in a previous publication, this enables us to complete the phenomenologically most important NNLO corrections to top pair hadro-production in this channel. We derive this two-parton contribution using the massive extension of the NNLO antenna subtraction formalism and implement those corrections in a parton-level event generator providing full kinematical information on all final state particles. In addition, we also derive the heavy quark contributions proportional to $N_h$. Combining the new leading-colour and heavy quark contributions together with the light quark contributions derived previously, we present NNLO differential distributions for LHC and Tevatron. We also compute the differential top quark forward-backward asymmetry at Tevatron and find that our results are in good agreement with the measurements by the D0 collaboration.Comment: 48 pages, 9 figure

Antenna subtraction for the production of heavy particles at hadron colliders

The antenna subtraction method developed originally for the computation of higher order corrections to jet observables from a colourless initial state is extended for hadron collider processes involving a pair of massive particles and jets in the final state at the next-to-leading order (NLO) level. Due to the presence of coloured initial states, the subtraction terms need to be divided into three categories (final-final, initial-final and initial-initial). In this paper, we outline their construction and derive the necessary ingredients: phase space factorisation, antenna functions and also integrated antennae, including the effects of massive final states in all of those building parts. As a first application, we explicitly construct the colour-ordered real radiation and the corresponding antenna subtraction terms required at NLO for the production of a top quark pair and for the production of a top quark pair in association with a hard jet. The latter constitutes an essential ingredient for the computation of the hadronic production of a top-antitop pair at NNLO.Comment: 80 pages, LaTeX, version accepted for publication in JHE

NNLO QCD subtraction for top-antitop production in the qqˉq\bar{q} channel

We present the computation of the double real and real-virtual contributions to top-antitop pair production in the quark-antiquark channel at leading colour. The $q \bar q \to t \bar{t} g$ amplitudes contributing to the real-virtual part are computed with OpenLoops, and their numerical stability in the soft and collinear regions is found to be sufficiently high to perform a realistic NNLO calculation in double precision. The subtraction terms required at real-real and real-virtual levels are constructed within the antenna subtraction formalism extended to deal with the presence of coloured massive final state particles. We show that those subtraction terms approximate the real-real and real-virtual matrix elements in all their singular limits.Comment: 54 pages, 10 figure

Antenna subtraction with massive fermions at NNLO: Double real initial-final configurations

We derive the integrated forms of specific initial-final tree-level four-parton antenna functions involving a massless initial-state parton and a massive final-state fermion as hard radiators. These antennae are needed in the subtraction terms required to evaluate the double real corrections to $t\bar{t}$ hadronic production at the NNLO level stemming from the partonic processes $q\bar{q}\to t\bar{t}q'\bar{q}'$ and $gg\to t\bar{t}q\bar{q}$.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, 1 Mathematica file attache

Double real radiation corrections to ttˉt\bar{t} production at the LHC: the all-fermion processes

We present the double real radiation corrections to the hadronic $t \bar{t}$ production stemming from partonic processes with fermions only. For this purpose, we extend the NNLO antenna subtraction formalism developed originally for the computation of jet observables in $e^+e^-$ annihilation to include the evaluation of hadronic observables involving a massive pair of particles. In all partonic processes, we checked the validity of our subtraction terms given for leading and subleading colour contributions numerically by showing that the ratio between real radiation matrix elements and subtraction terms approaches unity in all single and double unresolved configurations.Comment: 68 pages, 9 figure