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Michal Czakon

Publications and source records attributed to Michal Czakon.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Top-associated Higgs-boson production using perturbative fragmentation functions at next-to-leading-order

Under certain conditions, the production of a Higgs boson in association with a top-anti-top pair at hadron colliders can be described via a factorisation theorem using perturbative fragmentation functions. The latter describe the nearly collinear emission of a Higgs boson from a top-quark and reproduce the leading mass dependence of the exact next-to-leading-order (NLO) calculation. Although the NLO fragmentation functions have been calculated a few years ago, it has not been possible up to now to demonstrate the applicability of the approximation in a realistic setup. At NLO, we analyse two different ways of treating the top-quark mass, called the zero-mass-top-quark (ZMTQ) and the hybrid prescription. We show that the method yields reliable results at LHC center-of-mass (cms) energies in the hybrid prescription. In the ZMTQ prescription, the results at LHC cms energies are only reliable in the quark-anti-quark channel, but become viable for the full $pp \rightarrow t\bar{t}H$ process at a 100 TeV hadron collider. In addition, we discuss some subtleties and complications arising when extending the formalism to next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) and beyond.

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arXiv2026

Next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to photon-pair production

The production of two isolated photons in high-energy hadron collisions poses a challenge to perturbative QCD because of large corrections through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). We present novel next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order ($\text{N}^3$LO) predictions and finally demonstrate perturbative convergence for this process. We discuss the considerable computational challenges and phenomenological results for the Large Hadron Collider.

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arXiv2025

Higher-order QCD corrections to top-quark pair production in association with a jet

The production of a top-quark pair, the heaviest known elementary particle, in association with a light jet is a key process for studying the properties of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Due to its significance as a signal process with considerable sensitivity to the top-quark mass and as a background process for new physics searches, it is crucial to predict differential cross sections with high precision. In this article, we present, for the first time, predictions for various kinematical observables at next-to-next-to-leading order in Quantum Chromodynamics. The perturbative behavior is analyzed, and uncertainties arising from missing higher-order contributions are substantially reduced. The necessary two-loop amplitudes have been evaluated in the leading-color approximation, and we provide estimates for the impact of the missing contributions.

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arXiv2023

Infrared-safe flavoured anti-$k_T$ jets

Flavour tagging is technically challenging on the experimental side. However, it suffers from a more fundamental problem from the theoretical point of view, in particular when implemented in fixed-order perturbation theory. It turns out that an infrared-safe definition of a flavoured jet is intricate due to the singularities induced by the emission of flavoured quark-anti-quark pairs of negligible energy. Although this issue has been addressed by a modification of the standard $k_T$ jet algorithm, the situation is not entirely satisfactory as most measurements rather use the anti-$k_T$ jet algorithm. In this work, we propose a flavour-aware infrared-safe modification of the anti-$k_T$ jet algorithm that is easy to implement within perturbative Monte Carlo frameworks and has minor impact on jet phenomenology when flavour tagging is not required. Besides the numerical verification of the infrared safety of the proposed algorithm at next-to-next-to-leading order, we also present results for the hadro-production of a lepton pair in association with a $b$-jet, and of a top-quark pair decaying into $b$-jets and leptons.

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arXiv2023

Isolated photon production in association with a jet pair through next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD

In this work, we provide a comprehensive set of differential cross-section distributions for photon + di-jet production in proton-proton collisions with next-to-next-to-leading order precision in massless QCD. The event selection corresponds to recent measurements by the ATLAS collaboration. We observe an improved description of data in comparison to lower-order calculations in the case of observables that are expected to be well described by perturbation theory. The results also show better agreement with data than parton-shower-matched and multi-jet-merged predictions generated for the ATLAS analysis using the \textsc{Sherpa} Monte Carlo. A particular highlight of our study is the use of exact five-point two-loop virtual amplitudes. This is the first calculation of a complete two-to-three hadron-collider process at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD that does not rely on the leading-colour approximation at two loops. We demonstrate, nevertheless, that the sub-leading-colour effects present in the infrared- and ultraviolet-finite double-virtual contributions are negligible in view of the remaining scale uncertainties.

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arXiv2023

NNLO QCD corrections to event shapes at the LHC

In this work we perform the first ever calculation of jet event shapes at hadron colliders at next-to-next-to leading order (NNLO) in QCD. The inclusion of higher order corrections removes the shape difference observed between data and next-to-leading order predictions. The theory uncertainty at NNLO is comparable to, or slightly larger than, existing measurements. Except for narrow kinematical ranges where all-order resummation becomes important, the NNLO predictions for the event shapes considered in the present work are reliable. As a prime application of the results derived in this work we provide a detailed investigation of the prospects for the precision determination of the strong coupling constant and its running through TeV scales from LHC data.

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arXiv2022

A first next-to-next-to-leading order study of three-jet production at the LHC

Multi-jet rates at hadron colliders provide a unique possibility for probing Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions. By comparing theory predictions with collider data, one can directly test perturbative QCD, extract fundamental parameters like the strong coupling $α_s$ and search for physics beyond the Standard Model. In this work we calculate, for the first time, the next-to-next-to-leading (NNLO) QCD corrections to typical three-jet observables and to differential three-to-two jet ratios. We demonstrate that the inclusion of the NNLO corrections significantly reduces the dependence of those observables on the factorization and renormalization scales. Besides its phenomenological value, this proof-of-principle computation represents a milestone in perturbative QCD.

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arXiv2021

W+c-jet production at the LHC with NNLO QCD accuracy

In these proceedings, we highlight some aspects of the recent computation of NNLO QCD corrections for W production in association with a charm jet at the LHC. The results are presented in the form of cross sections and differential distributions and are compared to ATLAS data.

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arXiv2021

NNLO QCD corrections to leptonic observables in top-quark pair production and decay

We calculate a comprehensive set of spin correlations and differential distributions in top-quark pair production and decay to dilepton final states. This is the first time such a complete study is performed at next-to-next-to leading order in QCD. Both inclusive and fiducial distributions are presented and analyzed. Good agreement between NNLO QCD predictions and data is found. We demonstrate that it is possible to perform high-precision comparisons of fixed-order calculations with fiducial-level data. Subtleties of the top quark definition are raised and clarified. Some of those are found to have a very significant impact on top-quark pair production at absolute threshold.

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arXiv2021

Two-loop leading-color helicity amplitudes for three-photon production at the LHC

We calculate all planar contributions to the two-loop massless helicity amplitudes for the process $q\bar q\to γγγ$. The results are presented in fully analytic form in terms of the functional basis proposed recently by Chicherin and Sotnikov. With this publication we provide the two-loop contributions already used by us in the NNLO QCD calculation of the LHC process $pp\to γγγ$ [Chawdhry et al. (2019)]. Our results agree with a recent calculation of the same amplitude [Abreu et al. (2020)] which was performed using different techniques. We combine several modern computational techniques, notably, analytic solutions for the IBP identities, finite-field reconstruction techniques as well as the recent approach [Chen (2019)] for efficiently projecting helicity amplitudes. Our framework appears well-suited for the calculation of two-loop multileg amplitudes for which complete sets of master integrals exist.

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arXiv2021

NNLO QCD corrections to diphoton production with an additional jet at the LHC

We calculate the NNLO QCD corrections to diphoton production with an additional jet at the LHC. Our calculation represents the first NNLO-accurate prediction for the transverse momentum distribution of the diphoton system. The improvement in the accuracy of the theoretical prediction is significant, by a factor of up to four relative to NLO QCD. Our calculation is exact except for the finite remainder of the two-loop amplitude which is included at leading color. The numerical impact of this approximated contribution is small. The results of this work are expected to further our understanding of the Higgs boson sector and of the behavior of higher-order corrections to LHC processes.

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arXiv2021

B-hadron hadro-production in NNLO QCD: application to LHC $t\bar{t}$ events with leptonic decays

We calculate, for the first time, the NNLO QCD corrections to identified heavy hadron production at hadron colliders. The calculation is based on a flexible numeric framework which allows the calculation of any distribution of a single identified heavy hadron plus jets and non-QCD particles. As a first application we provide NNLO QCD predictions for several differential distributions of $B$ hadrons in $t\bar t$ events at the LHC. Among others, these predictions are needed for the precise determination of the top quark mass. The extension of our results to other processes, like open or associated $B$ and charm production is straightforward. We also explore the prospects for extracting heavy flavor fragmentation functions from LHC data.

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arXiv2020

Simultaneous extraction of $α_s$ and $m_t$ from LHC $t\bar{t}$ differential distributions

We present a joint extraction of the strong coupling $α_s$ and the top-quark pole mass $m_t$ from measurements of top-quark pair production performed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the 8 TeV LHC. For the first time, differential NNLO theory predictions for different values of the top-quark mass are utilised for four kinematic distributions: the average transverse momentum of the top-quark, its average rapidity and the pair invariant mass and rapidity. The use of fastNLO tables for these distributions allows rapid evaluation of the differential theory predictions for different PDF sets. We consider the single differential distributions from the experiments both separately and in combination in order to obtain the best fit to theory. Our final values are $α_s=0.1159^{+0.0013}_{-0.0014}$ and $m_t=173.8^{+0.8}_{-0.8}$ GeV which are compatible with previous extractions using top-quark measurements. In the case of $m_t$, our value is also compatible with the world average value collated by the Particle Data Group.

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arXiv2020

Polarized $q \bar{q} \rightarrow Z +$Higgs amplitudes at two loops in QCD: the interplay between vector and axial vector form factors and a pitfall in applying a non-anticommuting $γ_5$

We consider QCD corrections to two loops for the polarized amplitudes of $q{\bar q}\to Z +$ Higgs boson. First we show how the polarized amplitudes of $b \bar{b} \rightarrow Z h$ associated with a non-vanishing $b$-quark Yukawa coupling and a scalar or pseudoscalar Higgs boson $h$ can be built up solely from vector form factors (FF) of properly grouped classes of diagrams, bypassing completely the need of explicitly manipulating $γ_5$ in dimensional regularization (up to a few "anomalous", i.e., triangle diagrams). We determine the contributions of the triangle diagrams in the heavy top limit. We present the analytic results of the vector FF and the triangle-diagram contributions to the axial vector FF, which are sufficient for deriving the two-loop QCD amplitudes for $b \bar{b} \rightarrow Z h$ with a CP-even and CP-odd Higgs boson $h$. We derive the respective Ward identity for these amplitudes, which are subsequently verified to two-loop order in QCD using these FF. In addition, the FF of a class of corrections to $q \bar{q} \rightarrow ZH$ proportional to the top-Yukawa coupling are obtained analytically to two-loop order in QCD in the heavy-top limit using the Higgs-gluon effective Lagrangian where the top quark is integrated out. We address a pitfall that occurs when applying the non-anticommutating $γ_5$ prescription to this class of contributions that has been overlooked so far in the literature. We attribute this issue to the fact that the absence of certain heavy-mass expanded diagrams in the infinite-mass limit of a scattering amplitude with an axial vector current depends on the particular $γ_5$ prescription in use.

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arXiv2020

Single-jet inclusive rates with exact color at $\mathcal{O}(α_s^4)$

Next-to-next-to-leading order QCD predictions for single-, double- and even triple-differential distributions of jet events in proton-proton collisions have recently been obtained using the NNLOjet framework based on antenna subtraction. These results are an important input for Parton Distribution Function fits to hadron-collider data. While these calculations include all of the partonic channels occurring at this order of the perturbative expansion, they are based on the leading-color approximation in the case of channels involving quarks and are only exact in color in the pure-gluon channel. In the present publication, we verify that the sub-leading color effects in the single-jet inclusive double-differential cross sections are indeed negligible as far as phenomenological applications are concerned. This is the first independent and complete calculation for this observable. We also take the opportunity to discuss the necessary modifications of the sector-improved residue subtraction scheme that made this work possible.

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arXiv2020

Top-quark pair production at complete-NLO accuracy with NNLO+NNLL$'$ corrections in QCD

We describe predictions for top-quark pair differential distributions at hadron colliders, which combine state-of-the-art NNLO QCD calculations and NLO electroweak corrections together with double resummation at NNLL$'$ accuracy of threshold logarithms and small-mass logarithms. This is the first time that such a combination has appeared in the literature. Numerical results are presented for the invariant-mass distribution, the transverse-momentum distribution as well as rapidity distributions.

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arXiv2019

Higher order corrections to spin correlations in top quark pair production at the LHC

We calculate, for the first time, the next-to-next-to leading order (NNLO) QCD corrections to spin correlations in top quark pair production at the LHC. The NNLO corrections play an important role in the description of the corresponding differential distributions. We observe that the Standard Model calculation describes the available delta-phi data in the fiducial region but does not agree with the delta-phi measurement extrapolated to full phase space. Most likely this discrepancy is due to the difference in precision between existing event generators and NNLO calculations for dilepton top-pair final states.

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