Inclusive Heavy Flavor Hadroproduction in NLO QCD: the Exact Analytic Result

TL;DR

This paper provides the first exact analytic calculation of all partonic channels for heavy flavor pair production in hadronic collisions at NLO QCD, aiding precision predictions for top quark pair production at the LHC.

Contribution

It delivers the first exact analytic results for heavy flavor production in NLO QCD, crucial for advancing NNLO calculations and understanding higher-order structures.

Findings

Unveiled the analytical structures behind heavy flavor observables.

Revealed non-trivial implications near partonic threshold.

Supported the development of precise top quark pair production predictions.

Abstract

We present the first exact analytic result for all partonic channels contributing to the total cross section for the production of a pair of heavy flavors in hadronic collisions in NLO QCD. Our calculation is an essential step in the derivation of the top quark pair production cross section at NNLO in QCD, which is a cornerstone of the precision LHC program. Our results uncover the analytical structures behind observables with heavy flavors at higher orders. They also reveal surprising and non-trivial implications for kinematics close to partonic threshold.