Secondary Production of Massive Quarks in Thrust

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive factorization framework for heavy quark production in thrust distributions in e+ e- collisions, incorporating advanced resummation, nonperturbative corrections, and variable flavor schemes, applicable across all quark mass regimes.

Contribution

It introduces the first application of a variable flavor number scheme to final state jets, with detailed factorization theorems and resummation up to N3LL order for heavy quark effects.

Findings

Resummation up to N3LL order improves precision.

Framework valid for all quark masses, from massless to decoupling limit.

Inclusion of nonperturbative power corrections and renormalon subtraction.

Abstract

We present a factorization framework that takes into account the production of heavy quarks through gluon splitting in the thrust distribution for e+ e- --> hadrons. The explicit factorization theorems and some numerical results are displayed in the dijet region where the kinematic scales are widely separated, which can be extended systematically to the whole spectrum. We account for the necessary two-loop matrix elements, threshold corrections, and include resummation up to N3LL order. We include nonperturbative power corrections through a field theoretical shape function, and remove the O(Lambda_QCD) renormalon in the partonic soft function by appropriate mass-dependent subtractions. Our results hold for any value of the quark mass, from an infinitesimally small (merging to the known massless result) to an infinitely large one (achieving the decoupling limit). This is the first example of an application of a variable flavor number scheme to final state jets.