Theoretical results for top quark production

Abstract

I discuss and compare several approaches to higher-order calculations of top quark production. I study the relative effectiveness of the approaches in approximating the exact NNLO results for the top-pair total cross section and highlight the theoretical and numerical differences between them. I show that the results from my soft-gluon resummation method are nearly identical to the exact NNLO cross section at all LHC and Tevatron energies. This agreement has important consequences for the validity of existing approximate NNLO differential distributions, for further refinements of the predictions, and for applications to other processes such as single-top production. I also compare approximate NNLO top quark transverse momentum and rapidity distributions with recent LHC measurements.

7 pages, 4 figures; contribution to Snowmass 2013 based on invited talk at the April Snowmass Energy Frontier Workshop at Brookhaven

References in corpus (9)

• The total top quark pair production cross-section at hadron colliders through O(alpha_S^4)
• Two-loop soft anomalous dimensions for single top quark associated production with a W- or H-
• -- HATHOR -- HAdronic Top and Heavy quarks crOss section calculatoR
• Next-to-next-to-leading-order collinear and soft gluon corrections for t-channel single top quark production
• NNLL resummation for s-channel single top quark production
• Next-to-next-to-leading soft-gluon corrections for the top quark cross section and transverse momentum distribution
• The theoretical top quark cross section at the Tevatron and the LHC
• The top quark rapidity distribution and forward-backward asymmetry
• Single top and top pair production

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Asymmetries in top quark pair production at hadron colliders
• The top quark forward-backward asymmetry at approximate N${}^3$LO
• Soft-gluon resummations and NNNLO expansions
• Top quark transverse momentum and rapidity distributions