NNLL soft and Coulomb resummation for squark and gluino production at the LHC

We present predictions for the total cross sections for pair production of squarks and gluinos at the LHC including a combined NNLL resummation of soft and Coulomb gluon effects. We derive all terms in the NNLO cross section that are enhanced near the production threshold, which include contributions from spin-dependent potentials and so-called annihilation corrections. The NNLL corrections at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV range from up to $20\%$ for squark-squark production to $90\%$ for gluino pair production relative to the NLO results and reduce the theoretical uncertainties of the perturbative calculation to the $10\%$ level. Grid files with our numerical results are publicly available.Comment: 42 pages, 17 figures. v2: published version; corrected fig. 6; generalized eq.(A.5) to arbitrary SU(N) gauge group

Higgs effects in top anti-top production near threshold in e+ e- annihilation

The completion of the third-order QCD corrections to the inclusive top-pair production cross section near threshold demonstrates that the strong dynamics is under control at the few percent level. In this paper we consider the effects of the Higgs boson on the cross section and, for the first time, combine the third-order QCD result with the third-order P-wave, the leading QED and the leading non-resonant contributions. We study the size of the different effects and investigate the sensitivity of the cross section to variations of the top-quark Yukawa coupling due to possible new physics effects.Comment: LaTeX, 17 page

Analytic structure in the coupling constant plane in perturbative QCD

We investigate the analytic structure of the Borel-summed perturbative QCD amplitudes in the complex plane of the coupling constant. Using the method of inverse Mellin transform, we show that the prescription dependent Borel-Laplace integral can be cast, under some conditions, into the form of a dispersion relation in the a-plane. We also discuss some recent works relating resummation prescriptions, renormalons and nonperturbative effects, and show that a method proposed recently for obtaining QCD nonperturbative condensates from perturbation theory is based on special assumptions about the analytic structure in the coupling plane that are not valid in QCD.Comment: 14 pages, revtex4, 1 eps-figur

Leptonic decay of the Upsilon(1S) meson at third order in QCD

We present the complete next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order short-distance and bound-state QCD correction to the leptonic decay rate Gamma(Upsilon(1S)->l+l-) of the lowest-lying spin-1 bottomonium state. The perturbative QCD prediction is compared to the measurement Gamma(Upsilon(1S)->e+e-)=1.340(18) keV.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Convergence of the expansion of the Laplace-Borel integral in perturbative QCD improved by conformal mapping

The optimal conformal mapping of the Borel plane was recently used to accelerate the convergence of the perturbation expansions in QCD. In this work we discuss the relevance of the method for the calculation of the Laplace-Borel integral expressing formally the QCD Green functions. We define an optimal expansion of the Laplace-Borel integral in the principal value prescription and establish conditions under which the expansion is convergent.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

αs\alpha_s from τ\tau decays: contour-improved versus fixed-order summation in a new QCD perturbation expansion

We consider the determination of $\alpha_s$ from $\tau$ hadronic decays, by investigating the contour-improved (CI) and the fixed-order (FO) renormalization group summations in the frame of a new perturbation expansion of QCD, which incorporates in a systematic way the available information about the divergent character of the series. The new expansion functions, which replace the powers of the coupling, are defined by the analytic continuation in the Borel complex plane, achieved through an optimal conformal mapping. Using a physical model recently discussed by Beneke and Jamin, we show that the new CIPT approaches the true results with great precision when the perturbative order is increased, while the new FOPT gives a less accurate description in the regions where the imaginary logarithms present in the expansion of the running coupling are large. With the new expansions, the discrepancy of 0.024 in $\alpha_s(m_\tau^2)$ between the standard CI and FO summations is reduced to only 0.009. From the new CIPT we predict $\alpha_s(m_\tau^2)= 0.320 ^{+0.011}_{-0.009}$, which practically coincides with the result of the standard FOPT, but has a more solid theoretical basis