Top quark pair production at small transverse momentum in hadronic collisions

Abstract

We investigate the transverse momentum resummation for top quark pair production at hadron colliders using the soft-collinear effective theory and the heavy-quark effective theory. We derive the factorization formula for $t\bar{t}$ production at small pair transverse momentum, and show in detail the procedure for calculating the key ingredient of the factorization formula: the next-to-leading order soft functions. We compare our numerical results with experimental data and find that they are consistent within theoretical and experimental uncertainties. To verify the correctness of our resummation formula, we expand it to the next-to-leading order and the next-to-next-to-leading order, and compare those expressions with the exact fixed-order results numerically. Finally, using the results of transverse momentum resummation, we discuss the transverse-momentum-dependent forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron.Comment: 39 pages, 7 figures, 1 table; final version in PR