Top pair threshold production at a linear collider with WHIZARD

We briefly describe how the Monte Carlo generator WHIZARD 2.2 can be employed to study large QCD effects enhancing the top-antitop production threshold at a next-generation lepton collider. While present state-of-the-art predictions at NNLL order are confined to inclusive total cross sections, our tool can be used to simulate differential distributions including NLL threshold resummation in the production, and with off-shell decaying tops. The new model will be shipped with WHIZARD from version 2.2.3 onwards, to be released along with this article.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. Proceedings of TOP2014, 7th International Workshop on Top Quark Physics, Cannes, France, September 29 - October 3 201

The Top-Antitop Threshold at the ILC: NNLL QCD Uncertainties

We discuss the top-antitop production cross section near threshold at a future linear collider accounting for the NNLL QCD corrections to the anomalous dimension of the leading S-wave production current computed recently within renormalization-group-improved NRQCD perturbation theory. We argue that the still unknown soft NNLL mixing corrections are negligible so that the NNLL QCD corrections to the total cross section can be considered complete for practical purposes. Based on combined variations of the renormalization and matching scales and the overall size of the perturbative corrections we estimate that the NNLL QCD total cross section has a normalization uncertainty of 5% at threshold. We present results for the total cross section and also for the experimentally more relevant case, when moderate cuts are imposed on the reconstructed top and antitop invariant masses.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures; v2: plots and appendix added, journal versio

The Fully-Differential Quark Beam Function at NNLO

We present the first calculation of a fully-unintegrated parton distribution (beam function) at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). We obtain the fully-differential beam function for quark-initiated processes by matching it onto standard parton distribution functions (PDFs) at two loops. The fully-differential beam function is a universal ingredient in resummed predictions of observables probing both the virtuality as well as the transverse momentum of the incoming quark in addition to its usual longitudinal momentum fraction. For such double-differential observables our result provides the part of the NNLO singular cross section related to collinear initial-state radiation (ISR), and is important for the resummation of large logarithms through N3LL.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure; v2: journal versio

Rapidity-Dependent Jet Vetoes

Jet vetoes are a prominent part of the signal selection in various analyses at the LHC. We discuss jet vetoes for which the transverse momentum of a jet is weighted by a smooth function of the jet rapidity. With a suitable choice of the rapidity-weighting function, such jet-veto variables can be factorized and resummed allowing for precise theory predictions. They thus provide a complementary way to divide phase space into exclusive jet bins. In particular, they provide a natural and theoretically clean way to implement a tight veto on central jets with the veto constraint getting looser for jets at increasingly forward rapidities. We mainly focus our discussion on the 0-jet case in color-singlet processes, using Higgs production through gluon fusion as a concrete example. For one of our jet-veto variables we compare the resummed theory prediction at NLL'+NLO with the recent differential cross section measurement by the ATLAS experiment in the $H\to\gamma\gamma$ channel, finding good agreement. We also propose that these jet-veto variables can be measured and tested against theory predictions in other SM processes, such as Drell-Yan, diphoton, and weak diboson production.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

On the Casimir scaling violation in the cusp anomalous dimension at small angle

We compute the four-loop $n_f$ contribution proportional to the quartic Casimir of the QCD cusp anomalous dimension as an expansion for small cusp angle $\phi$. This piece is gauge invariant, violates Casimir scaling, and first appears at four loops. It requires the evaluation of genuine non-planar four-loop Feynman integrals. We present results up to ${\mathcal O}(\phi^4)$. One motivation for our calculation is to probe a recent conjecture on the all-order structure of the cusp anomalous dimension. As a byproduct we obtain the four-loop HQET wave function anomalous dimension for this color structure.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, 1 ancillary file; v2: journal versio

Two-Loop Massive Quark Jet Functions in SCET

We calculate the $\mathcal O(\alpha_s^2)$ corrections to the primary massive quark jet functions in Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET). They are an important ingredient in factorized predictions for inclusive jet mass cross sections initiated by massive quarks emerging from a hard interaction with smooth quark mass dependence. Due to the effects coming from the secondary production of massive quark-antiquark pairs there are two options to define the SCET jet function, which we call universal and mass mode jet functions. They are related to whether or not a soft mass mode (zero) bin subtraction is applied for the secondary massive quark contributions and differ in particular concerning the infrared behavior for vanishing quark mass. We advocate that a useful alternative to the common zero-bin subtraction concept is to define the SCET jet functions through subtractions related to collinear-soft matrix elements. This avoids the need to impose additional power counting arguments as required for zero-bin subtractions. We demonstrate how the two SCET jet function definitions may be used in the context of two recently developed factorization approaches to treat secondary massive quark effects. We clarify the relation between these approaches and in which way they are equivalent. Our two-loop calculation involves interesting technical subtleties related to spurious rapidity divergences and infrared regularization in the presence of massive quarks.Comment: 51 pages + appendices, 8 figures, v2: journal versio

The Gluon Beam Function at Two Loops

The virtuality-dependent beam function is a universal ingredient in the resummation for observables probing the virtuality of incoming partons, including N-jettiness and beam thrust. We compute the gluon beam function at two-loop order. Together with our previous results for the two-loop quark beam function, this completes the full set of virtuality-dependent beam functions at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). Our results are required to account for all collinear ISR effects to the N-jettiness event shape through N^3LL order. We present numerical results for both the quark and gluon beam functions up to NNLO and N^3LL order. Numerically, the NNLO matching corrections are important. They reduce the residual matching scale dependence in the resummed beam function by about a factor of two.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures; v2: journal versio