arXiv subjects

S. Moch

Publications and source records attributed to S. Moch.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Heavy-flavor PDF evolution and variable-flavor number scheme uncertainties in deep-inelastic scattering

We consider a detailed account on the construction of the heavy-quark parton distribution functions for charm and bottom, starting from $n_f=3$ light flavors in the fixed-flavor number (FFN) scheme and by using the standard decoupling relations for heavy quarks in QCD. We also account for two-mass effects. Furthermore, different implementations of the variable-flavor-number (VFN) scheme in deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) are studied, with the particular focus on the resummation of large logarithms in $Q^2/m_h^2$, the ratio the virtuality of the exchanged gauge-boson $Q^2$ to the heavy-quark mass squared $m_h^2$. A little impact of resummation effects if found in the kinematic range of the existing data on the DIS charm-quark production so that they can be described very well within the FFN scheme. Finally, we study the theoretical uncertainties associated to the VFN scheme, which manifest predominantly at small $Q^2$.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Approximate four-loop QCD corrections to the Higgs-boson production cross section

We study the soft and collinear (SV) contributions to inclusive Higgs-boson production in gluon-gluon fusion at four loops. Using recent progress for the quark and gluon form factors and Mellin moments of splitting functions, we are able to complete the soft-gluon enhanced contributions exactly in the limit of a large number of colours, and to a sufficiently accurate numerical accuracy for QCD. The four-loop SV contributions increase the QCD cross section at 14 TeV by 2.7% and 0.2% for the standard choices mu_R=m_H and mu_R=m_H/2 of the renormalization scale, and reduce the scale uncertainty to below +-3%. As by-products, we derive the complete delta(1-x) term for the gluon-gluon splitting function at four loops and its purely Abelian contributions at five loops, and provide a numerical result for the single pole of the four-loop gluon form factor in dimensional regularization. Finally we present the closely related fourth-order coefficients D_4 for the soft-gluon exponentiation of Higgs-boson and Drell-Yan lepton-pair production.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Resummation of large logarithms in the VFN scheme for DIS heavy-quark production

We consider the impact of the resummation of large logarithms, which appear in the QCD evolution of the heavy-quark distributions, on the phenomenology of deep-inelastic heavy-quark production. The heavy-quark PDFs are derived using the fixed-order matching conditions as a boundary for the QCD evolution and the result obtained is compared to the distributions defined by the matching conditions at all scales. With such an approach, the effect of heavy-quark PDF evolution is found to be sizable at LO and dramatically reduces at NLO. The NNLO evolved distributions are not very different from the NLO ones at large scales, however, show substantial differences at low virtualities, i.e. where the additional large logarithms are numerically not important, while a mismatch between the NLO accuracy of the matching conditions and the NNLO accuracy in the evolution kernels causes a substantial excess in the heavy-quark distributions. This excess propagates into the variable flavor number (VFN) scheme predictions for the deep-inelastic structure functions and has to be compensated by a decrease in the small-$x$ gluon distribution determined from PDF fits based on the VFN scheme, which should be considered as a theoretical uncertainty in VFN PDF fits and reaches $\sim 30\%$ for the small-$x$ gluon distribution extracted from the data on deep-inelastic charm-quark production.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

An Update of the ABMP16 PDF Fit

We present an updated version of the ABMP16 nucleon PDFs, which is tuned by using recent precise data on $W$- and $Z/γ^*$-production at the LHC and the final HERA data on DIS $c$- and $b$-quark production and by imposing a stringent $Q^2$-cut on the inclusive DIS data in order to avoid the impact of higher twist terms at small $x$ at HERA. The new $W$- and $Z$-boson production data, in particular the updated version of the ATLAS data at the c.m.s. energy 7 TeV, are well accommodated into the present fit. The strange sea distribution obtained is consistent with the average of the up and down quark ones at small $x$. However, it is still suppressed with respect to the non-strange one by a factor of $\sim 0.5$ at moderate $x$. The small-$x$ gluon distribution is enhanced as compared to the previous ABMP16 fit, in line with updated data on the DIS $c$-quark production. Finally, a good description of the non-resonant $γ^*/Z$-production data, which are included into the ABM analysis for the first time, is achieved provided the photon-initiated lepton pair production is taken into account.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Five-loop contributions to low-N non-singlet anomalous dimensions in QCD

We present the first calculations of next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N^4LO) contributions to anomalous dimensions of spin-N twist-2 operators in perturbative QCD. Specifically, we have obtained the respective non-singlet quark-quark anomalous dimensions at N=2 and N=3 to the fifth order in the strong coupling alpha_s. These results set the scale for the N^4LO contributions to the evolution of the non-singlet quark distributions of hadrons outside the small-x region, and facilitate a first approximate determination of the five-loop cusp anomalous dimension. While the N^4LO coefficients are larger than expected from the lower-order results, their inclusion stabilizes the perturbative expansions for three or more light flavours at a sub-percent accuracy for alpha_s < 0.3.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2019

Two-loop evolution equations for flavor-singlet light-ray operators

QCD in non-integer $d=4-2ε$ space-time dimensions enjoys conformal invariance at the special fine-tuned value of the coupling. Counterterms for composite operators in minimal subtraction schemes do not depend on $ε$ by construction, and therefore the renormalization group equations for composite operators in physical (integer) dimensions inherit conformal symmetry. This observation can be used to restore the complete evolution kernels that take into account mixing with the operators containing total derivatives from their eigenvalues (anomalous dimensions). Using this approach we calculate the two-loop (NLO) evolution kernels for the leading twist flavor-singlet operators in the position space (light-ray operator) representation. As the main result of phenomenological relevance, in this way we are able to confirm the evolution equations of flavor-singlet generalized hadron parton distributions derived earlier by Belitsky and Müller using a different approach.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Conformal symmetry of QCD in $d$-dimensions

QCD in $d=4-2ε$ space-time dimensions possesses a nontrivial critical point. Scale invariance usually implies conformal symmetry so that there are good reasons to expect that QCD at the critical point restricted to the gauge invariant subsector provides one with an example of a conformal field theory. The aim of this letter is to present a technical proof of this statement which is important both as a matter of principle and for applications.

hep-th↗

arXiv2018

NLO PDFs from the ABMP16 fit

We perform a global fit of parton distribution functions (PDFs) together with the strong coupling constant $α_s$ and the quark masses $m_c$, $m_b$ and $m_t$ at next-to-leading order (NLO) in QCD. The analysis applies the $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}\, $ renormalization scheme for $α_s$ and all quark masses. It is performed in the fixed-flavor number scheme for $n_f=3, 4, 5$ and uses the same data as the previous fit of the ABMP16 PDF at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). The new NLO PDFs complement the set of ABMP16 PDFs and are to be used consistently with NLO QCD predictions for hard scattering processes. At NLO we obtain the value $α_s^{(n_f=5)}(M_Z) = 0.1191 \pm 0.0011$ compared to $α_s^{(n_f=5)}(M_Z) = 0.1147 \pm 0.0008$ at NNLO.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Anomalous dimensions and splitting functions beyond the next-to-next-to-leading order

We report on recent progress on the splitting functions for the evolution of parton distributions and related quantities, the (lightlike) cusp anomalous dimensions, in perturbative QCD. New results are presented for the four-loop (next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order, N^3LO) contributions to the flavour-singlet splitting functions and the gluon cusp anomalous dimension. We present first results, the moments N=2 and N=3, for the five-loop (N^4LO) non-singlet splitting functions.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

On quartic colour factors in splitting functions and the gluon cusp anomalous dimension

We have computed the contributions of the quartic Casimir invariants to the four-loop anomalous dimensions of twist-2 spin-N operators at N =< 16. The results provide new information on the structure of the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N^3LO) splitting functions P_{ik}^(3)(x) for the evolution of parton distributions, and facilitate approximate expressions which include the quartic-Casimir contributions to the (light-like) gluon cusp anomalous dimension. These quantities turn out to be closely related, by a generalization of the lower-order `Casimir scaling', to the corresponding quark results. Using these findings, we present an approximate result for the four-loop gluon cusp anomalous dimension in QCD which is sufficient for phenomenological applications.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2018

Four-loop results on anomalous dimensions and splitting functions in QCD

We report on recent progress on the flavour non-singlet splitting functions in perturbative QCD. The~exact four-loop (N^3LO) contribution to these functions has been obtained in the planar limit of a large number of colours. Phenomenologically sufficient approximate expressions have been obtained for the parts not exactly known so far. Both cases include results for the four-loop cusp and virtual anomalous dimensions which are relevant well beyond the evolution of non-singlet quark distributions, for which an accuracy of (well) below 1% has now been been reached.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Derivatives of Horn-type hypergeometric functions with respect to their parameters

We consider the derivatives of Horn hypergeometric functions of any number variables with respect to their parameters. The derivative of the function in $n$ variables is expressed as a Horn hypergeometric series of $n+1$ infinite summations depending on the same variables and with the same region of convergence as for original Horn function. The derivatives of Appell functions, generalized hypergeometric functions, confluent and non-confluent Lauricella series and generalized Lauricella series are explicitly presented. Applications to the calculation of Feynman diagrams are discussed, especially the series expansion in $ε$ within dimensional regularization. Connections with other classes of special functions are discussed as well.

math-ph↗

arXiv2017

Prompt neutrinos from atmospheric charm in the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme

We present predictions for the prompt-neutrino flux arising from the decay of charmed mesons and baryons produced by the interactions of high-energy cosmic rays in the Earth's atmosphere, making use of a QCD approach on the basis of the general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme for the description of charm hadroproduction at NLO, complemented by a consistent set of fragmentation functions. We compare the theoretical results to those already obtained by our and other groups with different theoretical approaches. We provide comparisons with the experimental results obtained by the IceCube Collaboration in two different analyses and we discuss the implications for parton distribution functions.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Fuchsia and Master Integrals for Energy-Energy Correlations at NLO in QCD

In this talk we discuss some aspects of the analytical calculation of energy correlations in electron-positron annihilation at a next-to-leading order in QCD. Our primary focus is on the most difficult task: the calculation of master integrals for real-emission contributions, which are functions of two dimensionless variables and the dimensional regulator. We use a method of differential equations and their so-called epsilon-form which is constructed with the help of the Fuchsia program based on Lee's algorithm.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Four-Loop Non-Singlet Splitting Functions in the Planar Limit and Beyond

We present the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N^3LO) contributions to the non-singlet splitting functions for both parton distribution and fragmentation functions in perturbative QCD. The exact expressions are derived for the terms contributing in the limit of a large number of colours. For the remaining contributions, approximations are provided that are sufficient for all collider-physics applications. From their threshold limits we derive analytical and high-accuracy numerical results, respectively, for all contributions to the four-loop cusp anomalous dimension for quarks, including the terms proportional to quartic Casimir operators. We briefly illustrate the numerical size of the four-loop corrections, and the remarkable renormalization-scale stability of the N^3LO results, for the evolution of the non-singlet parton distribution and the fragmentation functions. Our results appear to provide a first point of contact of four-loop QCD calculations and the so-called wrapping corrections to anomalous dimensions in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Strange sea determination from collider data

We consider determinations of the strange sea in the nucleon based on the QCD analyses of data collected at the LHC with focus on the recent high-statistics ATLAS measurement of the $W^\pm$- and $Z$-boson production. We study the effect of different functional forms for parameterization of the parton distribution functions and the combination of various data sets in the analysis. We compare to earlier strange sea determinations and discuss ways to improve them in the future.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Running of the Charm-Quark Mass from HERA Deep-Inelastic Scattering Data

Combined HERA data on charm production in deep-inelastic scattering have previously been used to determine the charm-quark running mass $m_c(m_c)$ in the MSbar renormalisation scheme. Here, the same data are used as a function of the photon virtuality $Q^2$ to evaluate the charm-quark running mass at different scales to one-loop order, in the context of a next-to-leading order QCD analysis. The scale dependence of the mass is found to be consistent with QCD expectations.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Three-loop evolution equation for flavor-nonsinglet operators in off-forward kinematics

Using the approach based on conformal symmetry we calculate the three-loop (NNLO) contribution to the evolution equation for flavor-nonsinglet leading twist operators in the $\overline{\text{MS}}$ scheme. The explicit expression for the three-loop kernel is derived for the corresponding light-ray operator in coordinate space. The expansion in local operators is performed and explicit results are given for the matrix of the anomalous dimensions for the operators up to seven covariant derivatives. The results are directly applicable to the renormalization of the pion light-cone distribution amplitude and flavor-nonsinglet generalized parton distributions.

hep-ph↗