Heavy-quark production in gluon fusion at two loops in QCD

TL;DR

This paper computes the two-loop virtual QCD corrections for heavy-quark production via gluon fusion, providing essential components for precise next-to-next-to-leading order predictions in hadron collisions.

Contribution

It introduces an exact two-loop calculation for heavy-quark production in gluon fusion, linking massless and massive QCD amplitudes, advancing precision in theoretical predictions.

Findings

Derived two-loop virtual corrections for heavy-quark production

Established relations between massless and massive QCD amplitudes

Contributed to the NNLO QCD correction framework

Abstract

We present the two-loop virtual QCD corrections to the production of heavy quarks in gluon fusion. The results are exact in the limit when all kinematical invariants are large compared to the mass of the heavy quark up to terms suppressed by powers of the heavy-quark mass. Our derivation uses a simple relation between massless and massive QCD scattering amplitudes as well as a direct calculation of the massive amplitude at two loops. The results presented here together with those obtained previously for quark-quark scattering form important parts of the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to heavy-quark production in hadron-hadron collisions.