Next-to-leading order QCD corrections and massive quarks in e+e− → 3 jets

Abstract

Abstract:We present in detail a calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the process e + e − → 3 jets with massive quarks. To isolate the soft and collinear divergencies of the four parton matrix elements, we modify the phase space slicing method to account for masses. Our computation allows for the prediction of oriented three jet events involving heavy quarks, both on and off the Z resonance, and of any event shape variable which is dominated by three jet configurations. We show next-to-leading order results for the three jet fraction, the differential two jet rate, and for the thrust distribution at various c.m. energies.

The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations

“…[9,70,[334][335][336][337][338], and for a heavy-quark-pair plus up to one jet in refs. [339][340][341][342][343][344][345]. All other processes are computed here for the first time at the NLO.…”

Two-loop QCD corrections to the heavy quark form factors: the vector contributions

“…While the former two contributions can be obtained [9] along the lines of the calculations of three jet production involving heavy quarks [10,11,12], the latter remain to be calculated.…”

Production of top quark pairs in association with a hard gluon to order $\alpha_s^2$

“…[15]). For the computation of σ 1 3 (x cut , µ) we use the techniques and results of [16] and [17]. In these papers, the production of three jets involving b quarks was studied at NLO, taking into account the b quark mass.…”

“…The matrix elements given there can be easily adapted to the case at hand. For technical details of the calculation, we refer the reader to [17]. Fig.…”

“…(Analogously, NLO results for three-jet fractions involving b quarks [18,16,17] have been used to extract a value for m b (µ = m Z ) from the high-statistics LEP [19] and SLD [20,21] data.) We consider here as a case study the result for r(x cut = 0.1) at √ s = 1 TeV.…”