Drell-Yan lepton-pair production: $q_T$ resummation at approximate N$^4$LL+N$^4$LO accuracy

Abstract

We consider Drell-Yan lepton pairs produced in hadronic collisions. We present high-accuracy QCD predictions for the transverse-momentum ($q_T$) distribution and fiducial cross sections in the small $q_T$ region. We resum to all perturbative orders the logarithmically enhanced contributions up to the next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (N$^4$LL) accuracy and we include the hard-virtual coefficient at the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^3$LO) (i.e. $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_S^3)$) with an approximation of the N$^4$LO coefficients. The massive axial-vector and vector contributions up to three loops have also been consistently included. The resummed partonic cross section is convoluted with approximate N$^3$LO parton distribution functions. We show numerical results at LHC energies of resummed $q_T$ distributions for $Z/\gamma^*, W^\pm$ production and decay, including the $W^\pm$ and $Z/\gamma^*$ ratio, estimating the corresponding uncertainties from missing higher orders corrections and from incomplete or missing perturbative information coefficients at N$^4$LL and N$^4$LO. Our resummed calculation has been encoded in the public numerical program DYTurbo.