Heavy Quark Production in the ACOT Scheme Beyond NLO

TL;DR

This paper extends the ACOT scheme for heavy quark production beyond NLO by combining exact NLO calculations with higher-order massless results to estimate NNLO and N3LO corrections in deep-inelastic scattering.

Contribution

It introduces a method to incorporate higher-order corrections into the ACOT scheme using massless Wilson coefficients and phase space adjustments, improving accuracy in heavy quark production modeling.

Findings

Approximate NNLO and N3LO corrections are estimated for structure functions.

Massless Wilson coefficients with rescaling effectively account for heavy quark mass effects.

Combining NLO ACOT with higher-order results enhances precision in theoretical predictions.

Abstract

We analyze the properties of the ACOT scheme for heavy quark production and make use of the MS-Bar massless results at NNLO and N3LO for the structure functions F2 and FL in neutral current deep-inelastic scattering to estimate the higher order corrections. The dominant heavy quark mass effects at higher orders can be taken into account using the massless Wilson coefficients together with an appropriate slow-rescaling prescription implementing the phase space constraints. Combining the exact ACOT scheme at NLO with these expressions should provide a good approximation to the full calculation in the ACOT scheme at NNLO and N3LO.