Electroweak prodution of top-quark pairs in e+e- annihilation at NNLO in QCD: the vector contributions

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed NNLO QCD calculation of vector current contributions to top-quark pair production in electron-positron annihilation, enabling precise predictions for various observables.

Contribution

It introduces a fully differential NNLO QCD framework for electroweak top-quark pair production, utilizing a generalized phase-space slicing method for real emissions.

Findings

Accurate predictions for inclusive and exclusive observables.

Demonstration of the method's effectiveness in complex calculations.

Enhanced understanding of top-quark pair production mechanisms.

Abstract

We report on a calculation of the vector current contributions to the electroweak production of top quark pairs in $e^+e^-$ annihilation at next-to-next-to-leading order in Quantum Chromodynamics. Our setup is fully differential and can be used to calculate any infrared-safe observable. The real emission contributions are handled by a next-to-next-to-leading order generalization of the phase-space slicing method. We demonstrate the power of our technique by considering its application to various inclusive and exclusive observables.