Updated predictions for the total production cross sections of top and of heavier quark pairs at the Tevatron and at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper provides updated, precise predictions for top-quark pair production cross sections at the Tevatron and LHC, including uncertainties and effects of different parameters, to aid experimental analyses.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive NLO+NLL predictions for heavy-quark pair production across a range of energies and masses, incorporating latest PDFs and uncertainty assessments.

Findings

Predicted top-pair cross sections with quantified uncertainties.

Analyzed the dependence on top-quark mass and scale variations.

Provided predictions for 10 TeV LHC conditions.

Abstract

We present updated predictions for the total production cross section of top-quark pairs at the Tevatron and at the LHC, and, at the LHC, of heavy-quark pairs with mass in the range 0.5-2 TeV. For t\bar{t} production at the LHC we also present results at \sqrt{S}= 10 TeV, in view of the expected accelerator conditions during the forthcoming 2008 run. Our results are accurate at the level of next-to-leading order in alpha_s, and of next-to-leading threshold logarithms (NLO+NLL). We adopt the most recent parametrizations of parton distribution functions, and compute the corresponding uncertainties. We study the dependence of the results on the top mass, and we assess the impact of missing higher-order corrections by independent variations of factorisation and renormalisation scales.