Linear power corrections to top quark pair production in hadron collisions
S. V. Makarov, Kirill Melnikov, Paolo Nason, Melih A. Ozcelik
Abstract
A bstract We compute, in the framework of renormalon calculus, the $$ \mathcal{O}\left({\Lambda}_{\textrm{QCD}}\right) $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>O</mml:mi> <mml:mfenced> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi> <mml:mi>QCD</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:mfenced> </mml:math> corrections to the production of $$ t\overline{t} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:math> pairs in hadron collisions under the assumption that $$ q\overline{q}\to t\overline{t} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>q</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> <mml:mo>→</mml:mo> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:math> is the dominant partonic channel. This assumption is not applicable to top quark pair production at the LHC but it is valid for the Tevatron where collisions of protons and anti-protons were studied. We show that the linear power correction to the total $$ t\overline{t} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mover> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mover> </mml:math> production cross section vanishes provided one uses a short-distance scheme for the top quark mass. We also derive relatively simple formulas for the power corrections to top quark kinematic distributions. Although small numerically, these power corrections exhibit interesting dependencies on top quark kinematics.