Differential cross sections for top pair production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper provides advanced theoretical predictions for top-quark pair production at the LHC, including transverse momentum and rapidity distributions, using approximate NNLO calculations with threshold resummation, and compares these to experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces the extsc{DiffTop} code for precise QCD calculations of heavy-quark pair production at hadron colliders, incorporating approximate NNLO corrections with threshold resummation.

Findings

Theoretical predictions agree well with ATLAS and CMS measurements.

extsc{DiffTop} is versatile for heavy-quark production analyses.

Provides improved tools for parton distribution function studies.

Abstract

We present results of phenomenological studies for top-quark pair production at the LHC at the center of mass energy $\sqrt{S} = 7$ TeV. The transverse momentum and rapidity distributions for final-state top quarks are calculated in perturbative QCD at approximate next-to-next-to-leading order ${\cal O}(\alpha_s^4)$ by using methods of threshold resummation beyond the leading logarithmic accuracy. The theoretical predictions are obtained by using the computer code \textsc{DiffTop} and are compared to recent measurements by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations. \textsc{Difftop} can be employed in the general case of heavy-quark pair production at hadron-hadron colliders and provides a basis for applications in QCD analyses for parton distribution functions determination.