Theoretical predictions for $t{\bar t}W$ cross sections at approximate N$^3$LO

TL;DR

This paper provides advanced theoretical predictions for the $t\bar{t}W$ production cross sections at the LHC, incorporating approximate N$^3$LO corrections, and demonstrates improved agreement with experimental data.

Contribution

The study introduces approximate N$^3$LO calculations for $t\bar{t}W$ production, including soft-gluon corrections, enhancing the precision of theoretical predictions.

Findings

Higher-order corrections significantly increase cross section estimates.

Predictions show better alignment with recent LHC measurements.

Differential distributions are notably affected by the corrections.

Abstract

We present theoretical calculations of higher-order QCD and electroweak corrections for the associated production of a top-antitop quark pair and a $W$ boson ($t{\bar t}W$ production) at LHC energies. We show predictions for cross sections at approximate N$^3$LO (aN$^3$LO) which include second-order and third-order soft-gluon corrections added to the exact NLO QCD+electroweak result. We compare our results to recent measurements from the LHC, and we find that our predictions provide improved agreement with the data. We also calculate the top-quark transverse momentum and rapidity distributions in $t{\bar t}W$ production. We find significant enhancements from the higher-order corrections to the total and differential cross sections for this process.