Enhanced non-perturbative effects through the collinear anomaly

We show that non-perturbative effects are logarithmically enhanced for transverse-momentum-dependent observables such as q_T-spectra of electroweak bosons in hadronic collisions and jet broadening at e^+e^- colliders. This enhancement arises from the collinear anomaly, a mechanism characteristic for transverse observables, which induces logarithmic dependence on the hard scale in the product of the soft and collinear matrix elements. Our analysis is based on an operator product expansion and provides, for the first time, a systematic, model-independent way to study non-perturbative effects for this class of observables. For the case of jet broadening, we relate the leading correction to the non-perturbative shift of the thrust distribution.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. v2: Minor changes, references added. Journal versio

NNLL Resummation for Jet Broadening

The resummation for the event-shape variable jet broadening is extended to next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy by computing the relevant jet and soft functions at one-loop order and the collinear anomaly to two-loop accuracy. The anomaly coefficient is extracted from the soft function and expressed in terms of polylogarithmic as well as elliptic functions. With our results, the uncertainty on jet-broadening distributions is reduced significantly, which should allow for a precise determination of the strong coupling constant from the existing experimental data and provide a consistency check on the extraction of alpha_s from higher-log resummations of thrust.Comment: 44 pages, 9 figure

Generic dijet soft functions at two-loop order: correlated emissions

We present a systematic algorithm for the perturbative computation of soft functions that are defined in terms of two light-like Wilson lines. Our method is based on a universal parametrisation of the phase-space integrals, which we use to isolate the singularities in Laplace space. The observable-dependent integrations can then be performed numerically, and they are implemented in the new, publicly available package SoftSERVE that we use to derive all of our numerical results. Our algorithm applies to both SCET-1 and SCET-2 soft functions, and in the current version it can be used to compute two out of three NNLO colour structures associated with the so-called correlated-emission contribution. We confirm existing two-loop results for about a dozen $e^+e^-$ and hadron-collider soft functions, and we obtain new predictions for the C-parameter as well as thrust-axis and broadening-axis angularities.Comment: 58 pages, 8 figures, associated package can be found at https://softserve.hepforge.org/. Minor revisio

Higher order QCD corrections in exclusive charmless B decays

We discuss exclusive charmless B decays within the Standard Model of particle physics. In particular, we consider hadronic two-body decays as B -> pi pi and perform a conceptual analysis of heavy-to-light form factors which encode the strong interaction effects in semi-leptonic decays as B -> pi l nu. Concerning the hadronic decays we compute NNLO QCD corrections which are particularly important with respect to strong interaction phases and hence direct CP asymmetries. We present results for the imaginary part of the topological tree amplitudes and a partial calculation of the real part of the amplitudes which is technically more involved. In our conceptual analysis of the QCD dynamics in heavy-to-light transitions we consider form factors between non-relativistic bound states. We perform a NLO analysis and compute the so-called soft-overlap contribution which is calculable in our set-up. As a byproduct of our analysis, we calculate leading-twist light-cone distribution amplitudes for non-relativistic bound states which can be applied for B_c or eta_c mesons.Comment: Ph.D. Thesis, 158 pages. v2: typos in Appendix A.2 corrected (thanks to R. Bonciani, A. Ferroglia and T. Huber for pointing them out

NNLO vertex corrections in charmless hadronic B decays: Real part

We compute the real part of the 2-loop vertex corrections for charmless hadronic B decays, completing the NNLO calculation of the topological tree amplitudes in QCD factorization. Among the technical aspects we show that the hard-scattering kernels are free of soft and collinear infrared divergences at the 2-loop level, which follows after an intricate subtraction procedure involving evanescent four quark operators. The numerical impact of the considered corrections is found to be moderate, whereas the factorization scale dependence of the topological tree amplitudes is significantly reduced at NNLO. We in particular do not find an enhancement of the phenomenologically important ratio |C/T| from the perturbative calculation.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure

The transverse-momentum spectrum of Higgs bosons near threshold at NNLO

We give next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) predictions for the Higgs production cross section at large transverse momentum in the threshold limit. Near the partonic threshold, all radiation is either soft or collinear to the final state jet which recoils against the Higgs boson. We find that the real emission corrections are of moderate size, but that the virtual corrections are large. We discuss the origin of these corrections and give numerical predictions for the transverse-momentum spectrum. The threshold result is matched to the known NLO result and implemented in the public code PeTeR.Comment: 17 pages, 9 Figures; v2: journal version, correction in the qg channe

Transverse-momentum spectra of electroweak bosons near threshold at NNLO

We obtain the next-to-next-to-leading order corrections to transverse-momentum spectra of W, Z and Higgs bosons near the partonic threshold. In the threshold limit, the electroweak boson recoils against a low-mass jet and all radiation is either soft, or collinear to the jet or the beam directions. We extract the virtual corrections from known results for the relevant two-loop four-point amplitudes and combine them with the soft and collinear two-loop functions as defined in Soft-Collinear Effective Theory. We have implemented these results in a public code PeTeR and present numerical results for the threshold resummed cross section of W and Z bosons at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, matched to next-to-leading fixed-order perturbation theory. The two-loop corrections lead to a moderate increase in the cross section and reduce the scale uncertainty by about a factor of two. The corrections are significantly larger for Higgs production.Comment: 33 pages, 3 figures; v2: journal version, correction in (73); v3: corrected qg-channel in (73

Two-loop current-current operator contribution to the non-leptonic QCD penguin amplitude

The computation of direct CP asymmetries in charmless B decays at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD is of interest to ascertain the short-distance contribution. Here we compute the two-loop penguin contractions of the current-current operators Q_{1,2} and provide a first estimate of NNLO CP asymmetries in penguin-dominated b -> s transitions.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl