Hadronic top-quark pair production with NNLL threshold resummation

TL;DR

This paper presents advanced calculations of top-quark pair production cross sections at Tevatron and LHC energies using NNLL threshold resummation, including bound-state effects, and discusses theoretical uncertainties and new approximate N3LO results.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive NNLL resummation framework for top-quark pair production, incorporating Coulomb effects and bound-state contributions, with detailed uncertainty analysis and new N3LO approximations.

Findings

Cross section at Tevatron: 7.22 pb with uncertainties.

Cross section at LHC (7 TeV): 162.6 pb with uncertainties.

Discussion of resummation ambiguities and theoretical uncertainties.

Abstract

We compute the total top-quark pair production cross section at the Tevatron and LHC based on approximate NNLO results, and on the summation of threshold logarithms and Coulomb enhancements to all orders with next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) accuracy, including bound-state effects. We find \sigma_{t\bar t} = 7.22^{+0.31+0.71}_{-0.47-0.55} pb at Tevatron and \sigma_{t\bar t} = 162.6^{+7.4+15.4}_{-7.6-14.7} pb at LHC with 7 TeV c.o.m. energy, for m_t=173.3 GeV. The implementation of joint soft and Coulomb resummation, its ambiguities, and the present theoretical uncertainty are discussed in detail. We further obtain new approximate results at N3LO.