English

The top quark forward-backward asymmetry at approximate N$^3$LO

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2015-04-13 v3

Abstract

I calculate the top quark forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron in both the laboratory frame and the ttˉt{\bar t} rest frame. I show that soft-gluon corrections are the dominant contribution to the asymmetry and closely approximate exact results through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). I present a calculation of the asymmetry including approximate next-to-next-to-next-to-leading-order (N3^3LO) soft-gluon contributions from next-to-next-to-leading-logarithm (NNLL) resummation as well as electroweak corrections. Thus approximate N3^3LO (aN3^3LO) results are obtained, which significantly enhance and improve previous NNLO results. The theoretical aN3^3LO result for the top quark forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron in the laboratory frame is (6.8±0.36.8 \pm 0.3)\%, and in the ttˉt{\bar t} rest frame it is (10.0±0.610.0 \pm 0.6)\% which is in excellent agreement with recent Tevatron data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1501.01581,
  title  = {The top quark forward-backward asymmetry at approximate N$^3$LO},
  author = {Nikolaos Kidonakis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.01581},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

9 pages, 2 figures, 1 table; published version