General-mass treatment for deep inelastic scattering at two-loop accuracy

TL;DR

This paper develops a next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) scheme for deep inelastic scattering that accurately accounts for heavy-quark masses, improving theoretical predictions near the heavy-quark threshold.

Contribution

It introduces an NNLO implementation of the S-ACOT-χ scheme with a validated factorization theorem and kinematic constraints, enhancing precision in heavy-quark structure function calculations.

Findings

Reduces scale dependence of heavy-quark DIS cross sections at two loops.

Incorporates kinematic constraints crucial near heavy-quark thresholds.

Provides an algorithmic procedure for NNLO scheme implementation.

Abstract

We present a next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) realization of a general quark mass scheme (S-ACOT-$\chi$) in deep inelastic scattering and explore the impact of NNLO terms on heavy-quark structure functions $F_{2,L}^{c}(x,Q)$. An amended QCD factorization theorem for DIS is discussed that validates the S-ACOT-$\chi$ scheme to all orders in the QCD coupling strength. As a new feature, kinematical constraints on collinear production of heavy quarks that are crucial near the heavy-quark threshold are included in the amended factorization theorem. An algorithmic procedure is outlined for implementing this scheme at NNLO by using mass-dependent and massless results from literature. At two loops in QCD cut diagrams, the S-ACOT-$\chi$ scheme reduces scale dependence of heavy-quark DIS cross sections as compared to the fixed-flavor number scheme.