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N. A. Lo Presti

Publications and source records attributed to N. A. Lo Presti.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

Analytic result for the nonplanar hexa-box integrals

In this paper, we analytically compute all master integrals for one of the two non-planar integral families for five-particle massless scattering at two loops. We first derive an integral basis of 73 integrals with constant leading singularities. We then construct the system of differential equations satisfied by them, and find that it is in canonical form. The solution space is in agreement with a recent conjecture for the non-planar pentagon alphabet. We fix the boundary constants of the differential equations by exploiting constraints from the absence of unphysical singularities. The solution of the differential equations in the Euclidean region is expressed in terms of iterated integrals. We cross-check the latter against previously known results in the literature, as well as with independent Mellin-Barnes calculations.

hep-ph↗

Pentagon functions for massless planar scattering amplitudes

Loop amplitudes for massless five particle scattering processes contain Feynman integrals depending on the external momentum invariants: pentagon functions. We perform a detailed study of the analyticity properties and cut structure of these functions up to two loops in the planar case, where we classify and identify the minimal set of basis functions. They are computed from the canonical form of their differential equations and expressed in terms of generalized polylogarithms, or alternatively as one-dimensional integrals. We present analytical expressions and numerical evaluation routines for these pentagon functions, in all kinematical configurations relevant to five-particle scattering processes.

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On the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to heavy-quark production in deep-inelastic scattering

The contribution of quarks with masses m >> Lambda_QCD is the only part of the structure functions in deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) which is not yet known at the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) of perturbative QCD. We present improved partial NNLO results for the most important structure function F_2(x,Q^2) near the partonic threshold, in the high-energy (small-x) limit and at high scales Q^2 >> m^2; and employ these results to construct approximations for the gluon and quark coefficient functions which cover the full kinematic plane. The approximation uncertainties are carefully investigated, and found to be large only at very small values, x smaller about 10^-3, of the Bjorken variable.

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Analytic form of the two-loop planar five-gluon all-plus-helicity amplitude in QCD

Virtual two-loop corrections to scattering amplitudes are a key ingredient to precision physics at collider experiments. We compute the full set of planar master integrals relevant to five-point functions in massless QCD, and use these to derive an analytical expression for the two-loop five-gluon all-plus-helicity amplitude. After subtracting terms that are related to the universal infrared and ultraviolet pole structure, we obtain a remarkably simple and compact finite remainder function, consisting only of dilogarithms.

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Generalized threshold resummation in inclusive DIS and semi-inclusive electron-positron annihilation

We present analytic all-order results for the highest three threshold logarithms of the space-like and time-like off-diagonal splitting functions and the corresponding coefficient functions for inclusive deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) and semi-inclusive e^+ e^- annihilation. All these results, obtained through an order-by-order analysis of the structure of the corresponding unfactorized quantities in dimensional regularization, can be expressed in terms of the Bernoulli functions introduced by one of us and leading-logarithmic soft-gluon exponentials. The resulting numerical corrections are small for the splitting functions but large for the coefficient functions. In both cases more terms in the threshold expansion need to be determined in order to arrive at quantitatively reliable results.

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Leading large-x logarithms of the quark-gluon contributions to inclusive Higgs-boson and lepton-pair production

We present all-order expressions for the leading double-logarithmic threshold contributions to the quark-gluon coefficient functions for inclusive Higgs-boson production in the heavy top-quark limit and for Drell-Yan lepton-pair production. These results have been derived using the structure of the unfactorized cross sections in dimensional regularization and the large-x resummation of the gluon-quark and quark-gluon splitting functions. The resummed coefficient functions, which are identical up to colour factor replacements, are similar to their counterparts in deep-inelastic scattering but slightly more complicated.

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Next-to-Leading Order Gamma Gamma + 2-Jet Production at the LHC

We present next-to-leading order QCD predictions for cross sections and for a comprehensive set of distributions in diphoton + 2-jet production at the Large Hadron Collider. We consider the contributions from loop amplitudes for two photons and four gluons, but we neglect top quarks. We use BlackHat together with SHERPA to carry out the computation. We use a Frixione cone isolation for the photons. We study standard sets of cuts on the jets and the photons, and also sets of cuts appropriate for studying backgrounds to Higgs-boson production via vector-boson fusion.

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Next-to-leading order diphoton+2-jet production at the LHC

We present results from a recent calculation of prompt photon-pair production in association with two jets to next-to-leading order (NLO) at the LHC. The virtual contribution is evaluated using the BlackHat library, a numerical implementation of on-shell methods for one-loop amplitudes, in conjunction with SHERPA. We study four sets of cuts: standard jet cuts, a set of Higgs-related cuts suggested by ATLAS, and corresponding sets which isolate the kinematic region where the process becomes the largest background to Higgs production via vector-boson fusion.

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Progress on double-logarithmic large-x and small-x resummations for (semi-)inclusive hard processes

Over the past few years considerable progress has been made on the resummation of double-logarithmically enhanced threshold (large-x) and high-energy (small-x) higher-order contributions to the splitting functions for parton and fragmentation distributions and to the coefficient functions for inclusive deep-inelastic scattering and semi-inclusive e^+e^- annihilation. We present an overview of the methods which allow, in many cases, to derive the coefficients of the highest three logarithms at all orders in the strong coupling from next-to-next-to-leading order results in massless perturbative QCD. Some representative analytical and numerical results are shown, and the present limitations of these resummations are discussed.

hep-ph↗

Generalized threshold resummation for semi-inclusive e+e- annihilation

Recently methods have been developed to extend the resummation of large-x double logarithms in inclusive deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) to terms not addressed by the soft-gluon exponentiation. Here we briefly outline our approach based on fixed-order results, the general large-x structure in dimensional regularization and the all-order factorization of mass singularities, which is directly applicable also to semi-inclusive e+e- annihilation (SIA). We then present some main results for the corresponding timelike splitting functions and transverse and longitudinal fragmentation functions. The close relation between DIS and SIA facilitates the determination of additional third-order results for the latter function which is fully known only at the next-to-leading order. Therefore all above quantities can be resummed at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy.

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Threshold-improved predictions for charm production in deep-inelastic scattering

We have extended previous results on the threshold expansion of the gluon coefficient function for the charm contribution to the deep-inelastic structure function F_2 by deriving all threshold-enhanced contributions at the next-to-next-to-leading order. The size of these corrections is briefly illustrated, and a first step towards extending this improvement to more differential charm-production cross sections is presented.

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