The Importance of Proper Renormalization Scale-Setting for Testing QCD at Colliders

TL;DR

This paper discusses how the Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC) improves the precision of QCD predictions at colliders by properly setting the renormalization scale, reducing theoretical uncertainties and enhancing sensitivity to new physics.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates the application of PMC to collider processes, showing it systematically reduces uncertainties and is theoretically well-founded, improving QCD predictions.

Findings

PMC eliminates renormalization scale ambiguities.

Application of PMC increases collider sensitivity to new physics.

PMC predictions are independent of renormalization scheme.

Abstract

A primary problem for perturbative QCD analyses is how to set the renormalization scale of the QCD running coupling in order to achieve maximally precise fixed-order predictions for physical observables. The Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC) eliminates the ambiguities associated with the conventional renormalization scale-setting procedure, giving predictions which are independent of the choice of renormalization scheme. The scales of the QCD couplings and the effective number of quark flavors are set order by order in the pQCD series. The PMC has a solid theoretical foundation, satisfying the standard renormalization group invariance and all of the the self-consistency conditions derived from the renormalization group......In this brief report, we summarize the results of our recent PMC applications for a number of collider processes, emphasizing their generality and applicability....... These results demonstrate that the application of the PMC systematically eliminates a major theoretical uncertainty for pQCD predictions, thus increasing the sensitivity of the colliders to possible new physics beyond the Standard Model.