A comprehensive analysis of Drell-Yan production uncertainties and mass effects at moderate and low dilepton masses

TL;DR

This paper thoroughly investigates uncertainties in Drell-Yan production at low invariant masses, incorporating advanced QCD calculations, heavy quark mass effects, and PDF variations to improve prediction accuracy.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of Drell-Yan uncertainties at N$^3$LO with exact heavy quark mass effects and detailed PDF and scale variation studies.

Findings

Quantified the impact of PDF choices on Drell-Yan predictions.

Assessed the effects of scale and coupling constant variations.

Highlighted the significance of heavy quark mass effects at low masses.

Abstract

We present a thorough investigation of the sources of uncertainties to the Drell-Yan production using state-of-the-art predictions for both neutral and charged current channels, focusing on the low invariant mass region. Differential predictions for the invariant mass spectrum are provided at N$^3$LO supplemented with exact charm and bottom quark mass effects calculated at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^2)$. The impact of PDF choices (including approximate N$^3$LO), scale variations, the variation of the strong coupling constant, and impact heavy quark mass effects on the distributions is studied in detail. We also comment on the correlation of high-energy astrophysical processes with the low-mass DY region.