Heavy-quark production in massless quark scattering at two loops in QCD

TL;DR

This paper computes two-loop virtual QCD corrections for heavy-quark production in quark-antiquark annihilation, assuming large kinematic invariants compared to the quark mass, advancing precision in theoretical predictions.

Contribution

It provides the exact two-loop corrections in the high-energy limit, using a novel relation between massless and massive amplitudes in gauge theories.

Findings

Two-loop virtual corrections derived for heavy-quark production.

Results are exact up to mass-suppressed terms.

Enhances NNLO QCD calculations for hadron collisions.

Abstract

We present the two-loop virtual QCD corrections to the production of heavy quarks in the quark--anti-quark--annihilation channel in the limit when all kinematical invariants are large compared to the mass of the heavy quark. Our result is exact up to terms suppressed by powers of the heavy-quark mass. The derivation is based on a simple relation between massless and massive scattering amplitudes in gauge theories proposed recently by two of the authors as well as a direct calculation of the massive amplitude at two loops. The results presented here form an important part of the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD contributions to heavy-quark production in hadron-hadron collisions.