Charged Current Drell-Yan Production at N3LO

TL;DR

This paper calculates the production cross section for lepton-neutrino pairs at the LHC at N3LO in QCD, providing new precise predictions for W boson production and charge asymmetry.

Contribution

It introduces the first N3LO QCD calculations for W boson production cross sections and related observables at the LHC.

Findings

N3LO corrections significantly affect the inclusive W production cross section.

The study provides refined predictions for charge asymmetry at the LHC.

Ratios of W+ to W- production are precisely quantified.

Abstract

We present the production cross section for a lepton-neutrino pair at the Large Hadron Collider computed at next-to-next-to-next-to leading order (N3LO) in QCD perturbation theory. We compute the partonic coefficient functions of a virtual $W^{\pm}$ boson at this order. We then use these analytic functions to study the progression of the perturbative series in different observables. In particular, we investigate the impact of the newly obtained corrections on the inclusive production cross section of $W^{\pm}$ bosons, as well as on the ratios of the production cross sections for $W^+$, $W^-$ and/or a virtual photon. Finally, we present N3LO predictions for the charge asymmetry at the LHC.