Percent-Level-Precision Physics at the Tevatron: Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order QCD Corrections to q q ¯ → t t ¯ + X

We compute the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the partonic reaction that dominates top-pair production at the Tevatron. This is the first ever next-to-next-to-leading order calculation of an observable with more than two colored partons and/or massive fermions at hadron colliders. Augmenting our fixed order calculation with soft-gluon resummation through next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, we observe that the predicted total inclusive cross section exhibits a very small perturbative uncertainty, estimated at ±2.7%. We expect that once all subdominant partonic reactions are accounted for, and work in this direction is ongoing, the perturbative theoretical uncertainty for this…

• DF
  Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
• GW
  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover
• L
  Leibniz-Gemeinschaft