Helicity Amplitudes for Single-Top Production

Single top quark production at hadron colliders allows a direct measurement of the top quark charged current coupling. We present the complete tree-level helicity amplitudes for four processes involving the production and semileptonic decay of a single top quark: W-gluon fusion, flavor excitation, s-channel production and W-associated production. For the first three processes we study the quality of the narrow top width approximation. We also examine momentum and angular distributions of some of the final state particles.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, final versio

Fully differential QCD corrections to single top quark final states

A new next-to-leading order Monte Carlo program for calculation of fully differential single top quark final states is described and first results presented. Both the s- and t-channel contributions are included.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, talk presented at DPF2000, August 9-12, 2000. To appear in International Journal of Modern Physics

The singular behavior of massive QCD amplitudes

We discuss the structure of infrared singularities in on-shell QCD amplitudes with massive partons and present a general factorization formula in the limit of small parton masses. The factorization formula gives rise to an all-order exponentiation of both, the soft poles in dimensional regularization and the large collinear logarithms of the parton masses. Moreover, it provides a universal relation between any on-shell amplitude with massive external partons and its corresponding massless amplitude. For the form factor of a heavy quark we present explicit results including the fixed-order expansion up to three loops in the small mass limit. For general scattering processes we show how our constructive method applies to the computation of all singularities as well as the constant (mass-independent) terms of a generic massive n-parton QCD amplitude up to the next-to-next-to-leading order corrections.Comment: version to appear in JHEP (sec. 3 with expanded discussion and appendix with added results

The treatment of the infrared region in perturbative QCD

We discuss the contribution coming from the infrared region to NLO matrix elements and/or coefficient functions of hard QCD processes. Strictly speaking, this contribution is not known theoretically, since it is beyond perturbative QCD. For DGLAP evolution all the infrared contributions are collected in the phenomenological input parton distribution functions (PDFs), at some relatively low scale Q_0; functions which are obtained from a fit to the `global' data. However dimensional regularization sometimes produces a non-zero result coming from the infrared region. Instead of this conventional regularization treatment, we argue that the proper procedure is to first subtract from the NLO matrix element the contribution already generated at the same order in \alpha_s by the LO DGLAP splitting function convoluted with the LO matrix element. This prescription eliminates the logarithmic infrared divergence, giving a well-defined result which is consistent with the original idea that everything below Q_0 is collected in the PDF input. We quantify the difference between the proposed treatment and the conventional approach using low-mass Drell-Yan production and deep inelastic electron-proton scattering as examples; and discuss the potential impact on the `global' PDF analyses. We present arguments to show that the difference cannot be regarded as simply the use of an alternative factorization scheme.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, title changed, text considerably modified to improve presentation, and discussion section enlarge

Expansion around half-integer values, binomial sums and inverse binomial sums

I consider the expansion of transcendental functions in a small parameter around rational numbers. This includes in particular the expansion around half-integer values. I present algorithms which are suitable for an implementation within a symbolic computer algebra system. The method is an extension of the technique of nested sums. The algorithms allow in addition the evaluation of binomial sums, inverse binomial sums and generalizations thereof.Comment: 21 page

The infrared structure of e+ e- --> 3 jets at NNLO reloaded

This paper gives detailed information on the structure of the infrared singularities for the process e+ e- --> 3 jets at next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbation theory. Particular emphasis is put on singularities associated to soft gluons. The knowledge of the singularity structure allows the construction of appropriate subtraction terms, which in turn can be implemented into a numerical Monte Carlo program.Comment: 59 pages, additional comments added, version to be publishe

Higgs Radiation off Top Quarks at the Tevatron and the LHC

Higgs bosons can be searched for in the channels $p\bar p/pp\to t\bar tH+X$ at the Tevatron and the LHC. We have calculated the QCD corrections to these processes in the Standard Model at next-to-leading order. The higher-order corrections reduce the renormalization and factorization scale dependence considerably and stabilize the theoretical predictions for the cross sections. At the central scale $\mu=(2m_t+M_H)/2$ the properly defined $K$ factors are slightly below unity for the Tevatron ($K \sim 0.8$) and slightly above unity for the LHC ($K \sim 1.2$).Comment: 5 pages, latex, 2 figure

Polarizing the Dipoles

We extend the massless dipole formalism of Catani and Seymour, as well as its massive version as developed by Catani, Dittmaier, Seymour and Trocsanyi, to arbitrary helicity eigenstates of the external partons. We modify the real radiation subtraction terms only, the primary aim being an improved efficiency of the numerical Monte Carlo integration of this contribution as part of a complete next-to-leading order calculation. In consequence, our extension is only applicable to unpolarized scattering. Upon summation over the helicities of the emitter pairs, our formulae trivially reduce to their original form. We implement our extension within the framework of Helac-Phegas, and give some examples of results pertinent to recent studies of backgrounds for the LHC. The code is publicly available. Since the integrated dipole contributions do not require any modifications, we do not discuss them, but they are implemented in the software.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, Integrated dipoles implemented for massless and massive case

Subtraction terms for one-loop amplitudes with one unresolved parton

Fully differential next-to-next-to-leading order calculations require a method to cancel infrared singularities. In a previous publication, I discussed the general setup for the subtraction method at NNLO. In this paper I give all subtraction terms for electron-positron annihilation associated with one-loop amplitudes with one unresolved parton. These subtraction terms are integrated within dimensional regularization over the unresolved one-particle phase space. The results can be used with all variants of dimensional regularization (conventional dimensional regularization, the 't Hooft-Veltman scheme and the four-dimensional scheme).Comment: 27 page

Subtraction terms at NNLO

Perturbative calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order for multi-particle final states require a method to cancel infrared singularities. I discuss the subtraction method at NNLO. As a concrete example I consider the leading-colour contributions to e+ e- --> 2 jets. This is the simplest example which exhibits all essential features. For this example, explicit subtraction terms are given, which approximate the four-parton and three-parton final states in all double and single unresolved limits, such that the subtracted matrix elements can be integrated numerically.Comment: 41 page