Heavy-quark pair production at two loops in QCD

TL;DR

This paper provides updated, precise predictions for top-quark pair production cross sections at various collider energies, including two-loop QCD corrections and threshold effects, relevant for current and future experiments.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive two-loop QCD calculations for heavy-quark pair production, including all threshold logarithms and scale dependencies at NNLO.

Findings

Accurate cross section predictions for Tevatron and LHC energies.

Inclusion of Coulomb and threshold logarithmic corrections.

Predictions for heavy-quark pairs with masses up to 2 TeV.

Abstract

We present updated predictions for the total cross section of top-quark pair production at Tevatron and LHC. For the LHC we also provide results at sqrt(s) = 10 TeV, in view of the anticipated run in 2008 and quote numbers for the production of new heavy-quark pairs with mass in the range 0.5 - 2 TeV. Our two-loop results incorporate all logarithmically enhanced terms near threshold including Coulomb corrections as well as the exact dependence on the renormalization and factorization scale through next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD.