Antenna subtraction for the production of heavy particles at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper extends the antenna subtraction method to handle NLO calculations involving massive particles and jets at hadron colliders, crucial for precise top quark pair production predictions.

Contribution

It develops the antenna subtraction framework for processes with initial-state colored particles and massive final states, including phase space and antenna functions.

Findings

Constructed subtraction terms for top pair production

Derived phase space and antenna functions with massive states

Enabled NLO and NNLO calculations for heavy particle production

Abstract

The antenna subtraction method developed originally for the computation of higher order corrections to jet observables from a colourless initial state is extended for hadron collider processes involving a pair of massive particles and jets in the final state at the next-to-leading order (NLO) level. Due to the presence of coloured initial states, the subtraction terms need to be divided into three categories (final-final, initial-final and initial-initial). In this paper, we outline their construction and derive the necessary ingredients: phase space factorisation, antenna functions and also integrated antennae, including the effects of massive final states in all of those building parts. As a first application, we explicitly construct the colour-ordered real radiation and the corresponding antenna subtraction terms required at NLO for the production of a top quark pair and for the production of a top quark pair in association with a hard jet. The latter constitutes an essential ingredient for the computation of the hadronic production of a top-antitop pair at NNLO.