Neutral and Charged Current Semi-Inclusive Deep-Inelastic Scattering at NNLO QCD

TL;DR

This paper presents the calculation of NNLO QCD corrections for semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering, including electroweak effects, to improve theoretical predictions relevant for future Electron-Ion Collider experiments.

Contribution

It provides the first analytical NNLO QCD corrections to SIDIS coefficient functions, incorporating electroweak interactions and polarization effects, enhancing precision in phenomenological analyses.

Findings

NNLO corrections significantly affect SIDIS cross-section predictions.

Electroweak interference impacts neutral current SIDIS observables.

Lepton polarization asymmetries can probe charged current interactions.

Abstract

Semi-inclusive hadron production in deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering (SIDIS) provides important probes of parton distributions and fragmentation functions. We compute the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) massless QCD corrections to the full set of SIDIS coefficient functions in analytical form, accounting for electroweak neutral current and charged current exchange. Focusing on the kinematical setting of SIDIS measurements at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), we quantify the impact of these corrections on the phenomenological predictions and their associated uncertainties. We study the impact of electroweak interference in the neutral current SIDIS process and investigate lepton polarisation asymmetries designed to enhance the sensitivity on charged current SIDIS.