Threshold resummation for Drell-Yan production: theory and phenomenology

TL;DR

This paper investigates the impact of threshold resummation on Drell-Yan production at hadron colliders, demonstrating its relevance beyond threshold regions and analyzing different resummation methods for accurate predictions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive phenomenological analysis of NNLO fixed order and NNLL resummation effects, highlighting the importance of subleading terms and resummation prescriptions.

Findings

Resummation effects are significant even far from threshold.

Different resummation prescriptions lead to notable differences.

Predictions for LHC Drell-Yan rapidity distributions are provided.

Abstract

We present a phenomenological study of Drell-Yan pair production at hadron colliders based on the NNLO fixed order calculation and on NNLL resummation of threshold logarithms. We give an argument to prove that resummation effects are relevant also for values of x=M^2/s far from threshold. We compare different prescriptions for the calculation of resummed quantities, emphasizing the differences coming from subleading terms, which are important when x is small. We present phenomenological predictions for Drell-Yan rapidity distributions at the LHC, we study the ambiguity related to the resummation prescription, and we compare it to that coming from scale variation.