The $q_T$ subtraction method for top quark production at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper applies the $q_T$ subtraction method to compute precise QCD corrections for top-quark pair production at hadron colliders, achieving next-to-next-to-leading order accuracy and comparing results with existing tools.

Contribution

It introduces the $q_T$ subtraction formalism for fully-differential calculations of top-quark production at NNLO in QCD, including all flavor channels.

Findings

Results agree with existing numerical programs

Provides a new method for precise top-quark production calculations

Enhances understanding of QCD effects in top physics

Abstract

We consider QCD radiative corrections to top-quark pair production at hadron colliders. We use the $q_T$ subtraction formalism to perform a fully-differential computation for this process. Our calculation is accurate up to the next-to-leading order in QCD perturbation theory and it includes all the flavour off-diagonal partonic channels at the next-to-next-to-leading order. We present a comparison of our numerical results with those obtained with the publicly available numerical programs MCFM and Top++.