The Variable Flavor Number Scheme at Next-to-Leading Order

TL;DR

This paper derives next-to-leading order matching relations for the variable flavor number scheme, incorporating two-mass effects of charm and bottom quarks, crucial for accurate heavy quark distributions at high-energy colliders.

Contribution

It introduces the first comprehensive treatment of two-mass effects in the variable flavor number scheme at NLO, enhancing precision in heavy quark parton distribution functions.

Findings

Numerical results across a wide range of scales.

Updated contributions to the structure function F2(x,Q^2).

Improved accuracy for heavy quark distributions at colliders.

Abstract

We present the matching relations of the variable flavor number scheme at next-to-leading order, which are of importance to define heavy quark partonic distributions for the use at high energy colliders such as Tevatron and the LHC. The consideration of the two-mass effects due to both charm and bottom quarks, having rather similar masses, are important. These effects have not been considered in previous investigations. Numerical results are presented for a wide range of scales. We also present the corresponding contributions to the structure function $F_2(x,Q^2)$.