The status of theoretical predictions for top-quark pair production at hadron colliders is reviewed, focusing on the total cross section, differential distributions, and the description of top-quark production and decay including off-shell effects.
We compute the total top-quark pair production cross section at the Tevatron and LHC based on approximate NNLO results, and on the summation of threshold logarithms and Coulomb enhancements to all orders with next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) accuracy, including bound-state effects. We find sigma_{tbar t} = 7.22^{+0.31+0.71}_{-0.47-0.55} pb at Tevatron and sigma_{tbar t} = 162.6^{+7.4+15.4}_{-7.6-14.7} pb at LHC with 7 TeV c.o.m. energy, for m_t=173.3 GeV. The implementation of joint soft and Coulomb resummation, its ambiguities, and the present theoretical uncertainty are discussed in detail. We further obtain new approximate results at N3LO.
We review a Soft Collinear Effective Theory approach to the study of factorization and resummation of QCD effects in top-quark pair production. In particular, we consider differential cross sections such as the top-quark pair invariant mass distribution and the top-quark transverse momentum and rapidity distributions. Furthermore, we focus our attention on the large invariant mass and large transverse momentum kinematic regions, characteristic of boosted top quarks. We discuss the factorization of the differential cross section in the double soft gluon emission and small top-quark mass limit, both in Pair Invariant Mass (PIM) and One Particle Inclusive (1PI) kinematics. The factorization formulas can be employed in order to implement the simultaneous resummation of soft emission and small mass effects up to next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. The results are also used to construct improved next-to-next-to-leading order approximations for the differential cross sections.
We consider top quark pair production in association with a hard jet through next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. Top quark decays are treated in the narrow width approximation and spin correlations are retained throughout the computation. We include hard jet radiation by top quark decay products and explore their importance for basic kinematic distributions at the Tevatron and the LHC. Our results suggest that QCD corrections and jet radiation in decays can lead to significant changes in shapes of basic distributions and, therefore, need to be included for the description of ttbar+jet production. We compare the shape of the transverse momentum distribution of a top quark pair recently measured by the D0 collaboration with the result of our computation and find reasonable agreement.
We investigate top quark pair production near the threshold where the pair invariant mass $M_{tbar{t}}$ approaches $2m_t$, which provides sensitive observables to extract the top quark mass $m_t$. Using the effective field theory methods, we derive a factorization and resummation formula for kinematic distributions in the threshold limit up to the next-to-leading power, which resums higher order Coulomb corrections to all orders in the strong coupling constant. Our formula is similar to those in the literature but differs in several important aspects. We apply our formula to the $M_{tbar{t}}$ distribution, as well as to the double differential cross section with respect to $M_{tbar{t}}$ and the rapidity of the $tbar{t}$ pair. We find that the resummation effects significantly increase the cross sections near the threshold, and lead to predictions better compatible with experimental data than the fixed-order ones. We demonstrate that incorporating resummation effects in the top quark mass determination can shift the extracted value of $m_t$ by as large as 1.4 GeV. The shift is much larger than the estimated uncertainties in previous experimental studies, and leads to a value of the top quark pole mass more consistent with the current world average.
In this work, we investigate the prompt $J/psi$ production in associated with top quark pair to leading order in the nonrelativistic QCD factorization formalism at the LHC with $sqrt{s} =13$ TeV. In addition to the contribution from direct $J/psi$ production, we also include the indirect contribution from the directly produced heavier charmmonia $chi_{cJ}$ and $psi^prime$. We present the numerical results for the total and differential cross sections and find that the $sideset{^3}{^{(8)}_1}{mathop{{S}}}$ states give the dominant contributions. The prompt $tbar t J/psi$ signatures at the LHC are analyzed in the tetralepton channel $ppto (tto W^+(ell^+ u)b) (bar t to W^-(ell^- bar u)bar b) (J/psitomu^+mu^-)$ and trilepton channel $ppto (tto W(q q^prime)b) ( t to W(ell u) b) (J/psitomu^+mu^-)$, with the $J/psi$ mesons decaying into muon pair, and the top quarks decaying leptonically or hadronically. We find that $tbar t J/psi$ proudction can be potentially detected at the LHC, whose measurement is useful to test the heavy quarkonium production mechanism.