The two-loop soft function for heavy quark pair production at future linear colliders
We report on the calculation of the threshold soft function for heavy quark pair production in e+ e- annihilation at two-loop order. Our main result is a generalization of the familiar Drell-Yan threshold soft function to the case of non-zero primary quark mass. We set up a framework based on the method of differential equations which allows for the straightforward calculation of the bare soft function to arbitrarily high orders in the dimensional regularization parameter. Remarkably, we find that we can obtain the bare two-loop Drell-Yan soft function from the heavy quark soft function to the order in epsilon required for a two-loop calculation by making simple replacements. We expect that…
Numerical Multi-Loop Calculations via Finite Integrals and One-Mass EW-QCD Drell-Yan Master Integrals
We study a recently-proposed approach to the numerical evaluation of multi-loop Feynman integrals using available sector decomposition programs. As our main example, we consider the two-loop integrals for the $\alpha \alpha_s$ corrections to Drell-Yan lepton production with up to one massive vector boson in physical kinematics. As a reference, we evaluate these planar and non-planar integrals by the method of differential equations through to weight five. Choosing a basis of finite integrals for the numerical evaluation with SecDec3 leads to tremendous performance improvements and renders the otherwise problematic seven-line topologies numerically accessible. As another example, basis integ…
Multiple polylogarithms with algebraic arguments and the two-loop EW-QCD Drell-Yan master integrals
We consider Feynman integrals with algebraic leading singularities and total differentials in $\epsilon\,\mathrm{d}\ln$ form. We show for the first time that it is possible to evaluate integrals with singularities involving unrationalizable roots in terms of conventional multiple polylogarithms, by either parametric integration or matching the symbol. As our main application, we evaluate the two-loop master integrals relevant to the $\alpha \alpha_s$ corrections to Drell-Yan lepton pair production at hadron colliders. We optimize our functional basis to allow for fast and stable numerical evaluations in the physical region of phase space.
A quasi-finite basis for multi-loop Feynman integrals
We present a new method for the decomposition of multi-loop Euclidean Feynman integrals into quasi-finite Feynman integrals. These are defined in shifted dimensions with higher powers of the propagators, make explicit both infrared and ultraviolet divergences, and allow for an immediate and trivial expansion in the parameter of dimensional regularization. Our approach avoids the introduction of spurious structures and thereby leaves integrals particularly accessible to direct analytical integration techniques. Alternatively, the resulting convergent Feynman parameter integrals may be evaluated numerically. Our approach is guided by previous work by the second author but overcomes practical …
Soft-virtual corrections to Higgs production at N$^3$LO
In this paper, we compute the soft-virtual corrections to Higgs boson production in gluon fusion for infinite top quark mass at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. In addition, we present analogous soft-virtual terms for both Drell-Yan lepton production in QCD and scalar pair production in N = 4 super Yang-Mills theory. The result for Drell-Yan lepton production is derived from the result for Higgs boson production using Casimir scaling arguments together with well-known results available in the literature. For scalar pair production in the N = 4 model, we show by explicit calculation that the result is equal to the part of the Higgs boson soft-virtual term which is of maximal tra…
Quark and gluon form factors to four loop order in QCD: the $N_f^3$ contributions
We calculate the four-loop massless QCD corrections with three closed quark lines to quark and gluon form factors. We apply a novel integration by parts algorithm based on modular arithmetic and compute all relevant master integrals for arbitrary values of the space-time dimension. This is the first calculation of a gluon form factor at this perturbative order in QCD.
The Complete Two-Loop Integrated Jet Thrust Distribution In Soft-Collinear Effective Theory
In this work, we complete the calculation of the soft part of the two-loop integrated jet thrust distribution in e+e- annihilation. This jet mass observable is based on the thrust cone jet algorithm, which involves a veto scale for out-of-jet radiation. The previously uncomputed part of our result depends in a complicated way on the jet cone size, r, and at intermediate stages of the calculation we actually encounter a new class of multiple polylogarithms. We employ an extension of the coproduct calculus to systematically exploit functional relations and represent our results concisely. In contrast to the individual contributions, the sum of all global terms can be expressed in terms of cla…
N^3LO Higgs and Drell-Yan production at threshold: the one-loop two-emission contribution
In this paper, we study phenomenologically interesting soft radiation distributions in massless QCD. Specifically, we consider the emission of two soft partons off of a pair of light-like Wilson lines, in either the fundamental or the adjoint representation, at next-to-leading order. Our results are an essential component of the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order threshold corrections to both Higgs boson production in the gluon fusion channel and Drell-Yan lepton production. Our calculations are consistent with the recently published results for Higgs boson production. As a non-trivial cross-check on our analysis, we rederive a recent prediction for the Drell-Yan threshold cross section …
Quark and gluon form factors to four-loop order in QCD: TheNf3contributions
We calculate the four-loop massless QCD corrections with three closed quark lines to quark and gluon form factors. We apply a novel integration by parts algorithm based on modular arithmetic and compute all relevant master integrals for arbitrary values of the space-time dimension. This is the first calculation of a gluon form factor at this perturbative order in QCD.
N3LOHiggs boson and Drell-Yan production at threshold: The one-loop two-emission contribution
In this paper, we study phenomenologically interesting soft radiation distributions in massless QCD. Specifically, we consider the emission of two soft partons off of a pair of lightlike Wilson lines, in either the fundamental or the adjoint representation, at next-to-leading order. Our results are an essential component of the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order threshold corrections to both Higgs boson production in the gluon fusion channel and Drell-Yan lepton production. Our calculations are consistent with the recently published results for Higgs boson production. As a nontrivial cross-check on our analysis, we rederive a recent prediction for the Drell-Yan threshold cross section us…
Computation of form factors in massless QCD with finite master integrals
We present the bare one-, two-, and three-loop form factors in massless Quantum Chromodynamics as linear combinations of finite master integrals. Using symbolic integration, we compute their $\epsilon$ expansions and thereby reproduce all known results with an independent method. Remarkably, in our finite basis, only integrals with a less-than-maximal number of propagators contribute to the cusp anomalous dimensions. We report on indications of this phenomenon at four loops, including the result for a finite, irreducible, twelve-propagator form factor integral. Together with this article, we provide our automated software setup for the computation of finite master integrals.
Soft-virtual corrections to Higgs production atN3LO
The authors compute certain (soft-virtual) corrections to the Higgs boson production in the gluon-gluon fusion at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. Such higher loop calculations are essential for comparing the theoretical predictions with the experimental results of the Higgs boson production at LHC.
A novel approach to integration by parts reduction
Integration by parts reduction is a standard component of most modern multi-loop calculations in quantum field theory. We present a novel strategy constructed to overcome the limitations of currently available reduction programs based on Laporta's algorithm. The key idea is to construct algebraic identities from numerical samples obtained from reductions over finite fields. We expect the method to be highly amenable to parallelization, show a low memory footprint during the reduction step, and allow for significantly better run-times.