QCD corrections in $tq\gamma$ production at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper presents NLO and approximate NNLO QCD corrections for $tq\gamma$ production at hadron colliders, improving theoretical predictions and comparison with experimental data.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed NLO and approximate NNLO calculations for $tq\gamma$ production, including differential distributions and uncertainty estimates.

Findings

aNNLO corrections improve data-theory agreement

Differential distributions are provided at NLO and aNNLO

Uncertainty estimates from scale and PDFs are included

Abstract

We study QCD corrections for the associated production of a single top quark and a photon ($tq\gamma$ production) at hadron colliders. We calculate the NLO cross section at LHC and future collider energies for a variety of kinematical cuts, and we estimate uncertainties from scale dependence and from parton distributions. We also calculate differential distributions in top-quark transverse-momentum and rapidity as well as photon energy. Finally, we study higher-order corrections from soft-gluon emission for this process, and we provide approximate NNLO (aNNLO) results for the cross section and top-quark differential distributions. We also compare our calculations with recent measurements from CMS and ATLAS at the LHC and find that the aNNLO corrections improve the comparison between the data and the Standard Model predictions.