Endpoint Factorization for Semileptonic Decays of Boosted and Resonant Off-Shell Top Quarks with a Large-Radius Bottom Jet

TL;DR

This paper develops a factorization framework for boosted off-shell top quark pair production in electron-positron collisions, incorporating QCD effects, off-shell and interference effects, and introducing a new distribution function called the ultra-collinear-soft (ucs) function.

Contribution

It introduces a novel factorization formula for off-shell top decays that includes the ucs function, accounting for non-factorizable effects and providing a first-principles approach to hadronization effects.

Findings

Derived the factorization formula using SCET and bHQET.

Computed the ucs function at order α_s and discussed its properties.

Provided the anomalous dimension of the ucs function up to three loops.

Abstract

We derive a factorization formula for boosted double resonant top-antitop pair production in $e^+e^-$ annihilation with a semileptonic top quark decay in the phase space region where the $b$-jet invariant mass is small. The decaying top quark state is defined through invariant mass measurements on the final states in the top and antitop hemispheres, and the $b$-jet is defined from clustering all hadrons in the top hemisphere. The factorization does not rely on the narrow width limit and accounts for the QCD off-shell and interference effects. The approach employs Soft-Collinear-Effective Theory and boosted Heavy-Quark-Effective-Theory and relies on a combination of factorization theorems known from $e^+e^-$ dijet production and inclusive semileptonic heavy meson endpoint decays. The result provides a first principles treatment of the dominant hadronization effects, which can be determined from $e^+e^-$ event shapes. In the factorization a new distribution function arises, called the ultra-collinear-soft (ucs) function, which encodes the Fermi motion of the decaying top quark within the state defined from the invariant mass measurement. The ucs function is a differential generalization of the inclusive bHQET jet function and shares properties of the shape function in semileptonic heavy meson decays. In frames where the top quark is very slow, it describes the coherent soft radiation arising from top production, propagation and decay, and encodes all effects that are non-factorizable from the perspective of the NW limit. Its form and renormalization depend on two light-cone momenta related to the top-jet and $b$-jet directions and their relative angle. Due to the large top quark width, the ucs function can be computed perturbatively, and we determine the QCD corrections at ${\cal O}(\alpha_s)$. The anomalous dimension is known to three loops.