Drell–Yan lepton-pair production: qT resummation at N4LL accuracy

Abstract

We consider Drell–Yan lepton pairs produced in hadronic collisions. We present high-accuracy QCD predictions for the transverse-momentum (qT) distribution and fiducial cross sections in the small qT region. We resum to all perturbative orders the logarithmically enhanced contributions up to the next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (N4LL) accuracy and we include the hard-virtual coefficient at the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N3LO) (i.e. O(αS3)) with an approximation of the N4LO coefficients. The massive axial-vector and vector contributions up to three loops have also been consistently included. The resummed partonic cross section is convoluted with approximate N3LO parton distribution functions. We show numerical results at LHC energies of resummed qT distributions for Z/γ⁎,W± production and decay, including the W± and Z/γ⁎ ratio, estimating the corresponding uncertainties from missing higher orders corrections and from incomplete or missing perturbative information coefficients at N4LL and N4LO. Our resummed calculation has been encoded in the public numerical program DYTurbo.