arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Peter Baernreuther.
We review recently derived NNLO QCD results for top-pair production at hadron colliders. We compare the size of the NNLO corrections in $q\bar q\to t\bar t+X$ with the LO and NLO ones, and address the question of convergence of perturbative series. We compare the NLO and NNLO K-factors for the Tevatron.
We compute the Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order (NNLO) QCD corrections to the partonic reaction that dominates top-pair production at the Tevatron. This is the first ever NNLO calculation of an observable with more than two colored partons, and/or massive fermions, at hadron colliders. Augmenting our fixed order calculation with soft-gluon resummation through Next-to-Next-to-Leading Logarithmic (NNLL) accuracy, we observe that the predicted total inclusive cross-section exhibits a very small perturbative uncertainty, estimated at +-2.7%. We expect that once all sub-dominant partonic reactions are accounted for, and work in this direction is ongoing, the perturbative theoretical uncertainty for this observable could drop below +-2%. Our calculation demonstrates the power of our computational approach and proves it can be successfully applied to all processes at hadron colliders for which high-precision analyses are needed.