Production of Drell--Yan lepton pairs in hadron collisions: transverse-momentum resummation at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy

TL;DR

This paper improves the theoretical prediction of Drell--Yan lepton pair production in hadron collisions by resumming logarithmic contributions at NNLL accuracy and matching with NLO results, enhancing precision across all q_T ranges.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive NNLL resummation framework combined with NLO calculations for Drell--Yan transverse momentum distribution, including all relevant perturbative terms up to order alpha_S^2.

Findings

Reduced scale dependence compared to lower-order calculations

Consistent matching with NLO results at intermediate and large q_T

Preliminary agreement with Tevatron data

Abstract

We consider the transverse-momentum (q_T) distribution of Drell--Yan lepton pairs produced in hadron collisions. At small values of q_T, we resum the logarithmically-enhanced perturbative QCD contributions up to next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. At intermediate and large values of q_T, we consistently combine resummation with the known next-to-leading order perturbative result. All perturbative terms up to order alpha_S^2 are included in our computation which, after integration over q_T, reproduces the known next-to-next-to-leading order result for the Drell--Yan total cross section. We show and discuss the reduction in the scale dependence of the results with respect to lower-order calculations, estimating the corresponding perturbative uncertainty. We present a preliminary comparison with Tevatron Run II data.