We compute the total cross-section and invariant mass distribution for heavy-quark pair production in e+e− annihilation at the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. The obtained results are expressed as piecewise functions defined by several deeply expanded power series, facilitating a rapid numerical evaluation. Utilizing top-pair production at a collision energy of 500 GeV as a benchmark, we observe a correction of approximately 0.1% for the total cross-section and around 10% for the majority of the invariant mass distribution range. These results play a crucial role in significantly reducing theoretical uncertainty: the scale dependence has been diminished to 0.06% for the total cross-section and to 5% for the invariant mass distribution. This reduction of uncertainty meets the stringent requirements of future lepton colliders.
@article{arxiv.2209.14259,
title = {Heavy-quark pair production at lepton colliders at NNNLO in QCD},
author = {Xiang Chen and Xin Guan and Chuan-Qi He and Xiao Liu and Yan-Qing Ma},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.14259},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
7 pages, 5 figures; invariant mass distribution for heavy-quark pair added; version published at PRL