No Arabic abstract
We report on a recently completed, first calculation of the full next-to-leading order QCD corrections for heavy flavor contributions to the inclusive structure function $g_1$ in longitudinally polarized deep-inelastic scattering. All results are derived with largely analytical methods and retain the full dependence on the heavy quarks mass. As a first phenomenological application, inclusive charm production at a future electron-ion collider and its sensitivity to the polarized gluon distribution is studied. Theoretical uncertainties due to the residual dependence on unphysical factorization and renormalization scales are estimated.
We provide a first calculation of the complete next-to-leading order QCD corrections for heavy flavor contributions to the inclusive structure function $g_1$ in longitudinally polarized deep-inelastic scattering. The results are derived with largely analytical methods and retain the full dependence on the heavy quarks mass. We discuss all relevant technical details of the calculation and present numerical results for the heavy quark scaling functions. We perform important crosschecks to verify our results in the known limit of photoproduction and for the unpolarized electroproduction of heavy quarks. We also compare our calculations to the available, partial results in the polarized case, in particular, in the limit of asymptotically large photon virtualities, and analyze the behavior of the scaling functions near threshold. First steps towards phenomenological applications are taken by providing some estimates for inclusive charm production in polarized deep-inelastic scattering at a future electron-ion collider and studying their sensitivity to the polarized gluon distribution. The residual dependence of heavy quark electroproduction on unphysical factorization and renormalization scales and on the heavy quark mass is investigated.
In the asymptotic limit $Q^2 gg m^2$, the non-power corrections to the heavy flavour Wilson coefficients in deep--inelastic scattering are given in terms of massless Wilson coeffcients and massive operator matrix elements. We start extending the existing NLO calculation for these operator matrix elements by calculating the O($epsilon$) terms of the two--loop expressions and having first investigations into the three--loop diagrams needed to O($alpha_s^3$).
We present an implementation of electroweak Z-boson production in association with two jets at hadron colliders in the POWHEG framework, a method that allows the interfacing of NLO-QCD calculations with parton-shower Monte Carlo programs. We focus on the leptonic decays of the weak gauge boson, and take photonic and non-resonant contributions to the matrix elements fully into account. We provide results for observables of particular importance for the suppression of QCD backgrounds to vector-boson fusion processes by means of central-jet-veto techniques. While parton-shower effects are small for most observables associated with the two hardest jets, they can be more pronounced for distributions that are employed in central-jet-veto studies.
We present a first calculation of the heavy flavor contribution to the longitudinally polarized DIS structure function $g_1$, differential in the transverse momentum or the rapidity of the observed heavy antiquark $overline{Q}$. All results are obtained at next-to-leading order accuracy with a newly developed parton-level Monte Carlo generator that also allows one to study observables associated with the heavy quark pair such as its invariant mass distribution or its correlation in azimuthal angle. First phenomenological studies are presented in a kinematic regime relevant for a future Electron-Ion Collider with a particular emphasis on the sensitivity to the helicity gluon distribution. Finally, we also provide first NLO results for the full neutral-current sector of polarized DIS, i.e., including contributions from Z-boson exchange.
Cross sections and differential distributions for ZA production in association with two jets via vector boson fusion are presented at next-to-leading order in QCD. The leptonic decays of the Z boson with full off-shell effects and spin correlations are taken into account. The uncertainties due to different scale choices and pdf sets are studied. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of including anomalous quartic gauge couplings at NLO QCD.