Drell-Yan Lepton Pair Production Research Articles

Resummation of combined QCD-electroweak effects in Drell Yan lepton-pair production

We consider neutral- and charged-current Drell Yan lepton-pair production at hadron colliders, and include dominant classes of electroweak and mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to all orders in perturbation theory. The accurate description of these physical effects is vital for a precise determination of fundamental Standard Model parameters, such as the W-boson mass and the electroweak mixing angle, as well as for a solid assessment of the associated theoretical uncertainties. Our state-of-the-art resummation reaches next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy in both the electroweak and the mixed QCD-electroweak perturbative expansions, including constant terms at first order beyond Born level in both couplings, i.e. at order α and αsα. These effects are incorporated on top of QCD predictions at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic accuracy, which include constant terms at third order in the strong coupling. Our results retain, for the first time at this accuracy, full dependence on the kinematics of the final-state leptons, thereby enabling a realistic comparison with experimental analyses at the differential level in presence of fiducial cuts. We present a phenomenological analysis of the impact of electroweak corrections in relevant observables at the LHC. We find visible shape distortions in resummation-dominated kinematical regions with respect to pure-QCD predictions, highlighting the importance of a complete description, not limited to QCD, for precision Drell Yan physics.

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

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.

CJ15 global PDF analysis with new electroweak data from the STAR and SeaQuest experiments

We present updates to a recent CTEQ-Jefferson Lab (CJ) global analysis of parton distribution functions with a new set of electroweak data that provide unique access to quark flavor separation in the proton. In particular, recent WW and ZZ boson measurements from the STAR experiment at RHIC put additional constraints on light quarks and antiquarks near the valence regime. The new measurement of the Drell-Yan lepton pair production ratio in p+pp+p and p+dp+d collisions by the SeaQuest experiment at Fermilab extends the large-xx coverage of the previous E866 experiment and sheds new light on the light antiquarks distribution. In this report, the impact of these new data sets on parton distribution functions will be presented with emphasis given to the flavor asymmetry of the light antiquark sea at large values of the parton momentum xx.

PineAPPL: NLO EW corrections for PDF processes

Modern parton distribution function (PDF) determinations either neglect higher-order corrections in the electroweak (EW) coupling or implement them approximately for a subset of PDF processes. We present a new tool, PineAPPL, which supports perturbative correction in arbitrary powers of the EW and strong coupling constant, and stores theoretical predictions independently of the used PDFs in so-called interpolation grids. These are the foundation of any PDF determination, and will allow us to perform a PDF fit taking into account EW corrections for all processes consistently. Apart from PDF determinations PineAPPL can also be used in precision phenomenology to study the impact of different choices of PDF sets, without rerunning the time-consuming computation. As an application of this tool we show Drell-Yan (DY) lepton-pair production were larger effects of NLO EW corrections can be seen that will potentially influence the PDF fit and comment about which observables are particularly suited and NLO EW PDF fit and which are not.

Nuclear effects in the deuteron and global QCD analyses

We report the results of a new global QCD analysis, which includes deep-inelastic $e/\mu$ scattering data off proton and deuterium, as well as Drell-Yan lepton pair production in proton-proton and proton-deuterium collisions and $W^\pm/Z$ boson production data from $pp$ and $p \bar p$ collisions at the LHC and Tevatron. Nuclear effects in the deuteron are treated in terms of a nuclear convolution approach with bound off-shell nucleons within a weak binding approximation. The off-shell correction is controlled by a universal function of the Bjorken variable $x$ describing the modification of parton distributions in bound nucleons, which is determined in our analysis along with the parton distribution functions of the proton. A number of systematic studies are performed to estimate the uncertainties arising from the use of various deuterium datasets, from the modeling of higher twist contributions to the structure functions, from the treatment of target mass corrections, as well as from the nuclear corrections in the deuteron. We obtain predictions for the ratios $F_2^n/F_2^p$, and $d/u$, focusing on the region of large $x$. We also compare our results with the ones obtained by other QCD analyses, as well as with the recent data from the MARATHON experiment.

Towards precise collider predictions: the Parton Branching method

The collinear factorization theorem, combined with finite-order calculations in perturbative QCD, provides a powerful framework to obtain predictions for many collider observables. However, for observables which involve multiple energy scales, transverse degrees of freedom cannot be neglected, and finite-order perturbative calculations have to be combined with resummed calculations to all orders in the QCD running coupling in order to obtain reliable theoretical predictions, capable of describing experimental measurements. This is traditionally done either by analytic resummation methods or by parton shower (PS) Monte Carlo (MC) methods. In this talk we present the Parton Branching (PB) MC method to obtain QCD collider predictions based on Transverse Momentum Dependent (TMD) factorization. The PB provides evolution equations for TMD Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) which, upon fitting TMD PDFs to experimental data, can be used in TMD MC event generators. We present the basic concepts of the method and illustrate its applications to collider measurements focusing on Drell-Yan (DY) lepton-pair production in different kinematic ranges, from fixed-target to LHC energies. We discuss the latest developments of the method concentrating especially on the matching of next-to-leading-order (NLO) TMD evolution with MC-at-NLO calculations of NLO matrix elements.

Fiducial perturbative power corrections within the mathbf{q}_T subtraction formalism

We consider higher-order QCD corrections to the production of high-mass systems in hadron collisions within the transverse-momentum (q_T) subtraction formalism. We present a method to consistently remove the linear power corrections in q_T which appears when fiducial kinematical cuts are applied on the final state system. We consider explicitly the case of fiducial cross sections for Drell–Yan lepton pair production at the Large Hadron Collider up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N^3LO) in QCD. We have implemented our method within the DYTurbo numerical program and we have obtained perturbative predictions which are in agreement at the permille level with those obtained with local subtraction formalisms up to the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). At the N^3LO we are able to provide predictions for fiducial cross sections with numerical accuracy at the permille level.

Transverse momentum distributions in low-mass Drell-Yan lepton pair production at NNLO QCD

The production of lepton pairs at low invariant mass and finite transverse momentum resolves QCD dynamics at the boundary between the perturbative and non-perturbative domains. We investigate the impact of NNLO QCD corrections on these observables at energies corresponding to the BNL RHIC collider and to fixed-target experiments. Satisfactory perturbative convergence is observed in both cases. Only the collider data are found to be well-described by perturbative QCD, thus indicating the importance of non-perturbative effects in lepton-pair transverse momentum distributions at fixed target energies.

Matching NNLO predictions to parton showers using N3LL color-singlet transverse momentum resummation in geneva

We extend the geneva Monte Carlo framework using the transverse momentum of a color-singlet system as the resolution variable. This allows us to use next-to-next-to-next-to-leading-logarithm (${\mathrm{N}}^{3}\mathrm{LL}$) resummation via the radish formalism to obtain precise predictions for any color-singlet production process at the fully exclusive level. Thanks to the implementation of two different resolution variables within the geneva framework, we are able to assess the impact of such a choice on differential observables for the first time. As a first application, we present predictions for Drell-Yan lepton-pair production at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD interfaced to a parton shower simulation that includes additional all-order radiative corrections. We provide fully showered and hadronized events using pythia8, while retaining the NNLO QCD accuracy for observables which are inclusive over the additional radiation. We also show that it is possible to obtain a numerically good agreement between showered geneva predictions and the ${\mathrm{N}}^{3}\mathrm{LL}$ resummation for the transverse momentum spectrum by choosing a more local recoil scheme. We compare our final predictions to LHC data at 13 TeV, finding good agreement across several distributions.

Impact of inclusive hadron production data on nuclear gluon PDFs

A precise knowledge of nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) is---among other things---important for the unambiguous interpretation of hard process data taken in $pA$ and $AA$ collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the LHC. The available fixed target data for deep inelastic scattering (DIS) and Drell-Yan (DY) lepton pair production mainly constrain the light quark distributions. It is hence crucial to include more and more collider data in global analyses of nPDFs in order to better pin down the different parton flavors, in particular the gluon distribution at small $x$. To help constrain the nuclear gluon PDF, we extend the nCTEQ15 analysis by including single inclusive hadron (SIH) production data from RHIC (PHENIX and STAR) and LHC (ALICE). In addition to the DIS, DY, and SIH datasets, we will also include LHC $W/Z$ production data. As the SIH calculation is dependent on hadronic fragmentation functions (FFs), we use a variety of FFs available in the literature to properly estimate this source of uncertainty. We study the impact of these data on the PDFs and compare with both the nCTEQ15 and nCTEQ15WZ sets. The calculations are performed using a new implementation of the nCTEQ code (ncteq++) including a modified version of incnlo, which allows faster calculations using precomputed grids. The extension of the nCTEQ15 analysis to include the SIH data represents an important step toward the next generation of PDFs.

Analysis of Drell-Yan lepton pair production in the p−p(p¯) colliders using different angular ordering constraints and the kt -factorization approach

In this work, the $p\ensuremath{-}p(\overline{p})$ Drell-Yan lepton pair production (DY) differential cross sections at hadron colliders, such as LHC and TEVATRON, are studied in the ${k}_{t}$-factorization framework. In order to take into account the transverse momenta of incoming partons, we use the unintegrated parton distribution functions of Kimber et al. (KMR) and Martin et al. (MRW) in the leading order (LO), and next-to-leading-order (NLO) levels with the input MMHT2014 PDF libraries. Based on the different off shell partonic matrix elements, we analyze the behaviors of DY differential cross sections with respect to the invariant mass, the transverse momentum and the rapidity as well as the specific angular correlation between the produced leptons. The numerical results are compared with the experimental data, in different energies, which are reported by various collaborations, such as CDF, CMS, ATLAS, and LHCb. It is shown that the NLO-MRW and KMR schemes predict closer results to the data compared to the LO-MRW, since we do not have fragmentation. It is demonstrated that while the ${q}^{*}+{\overline{q}}^{*}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\gamma}}^{*}/Z+g\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{l}^{+}+{l}^{\ensuremath{-}}+g$ subprocess has a negligible contribution, it has a sizable effect in the low dilepton transverse momentum. In agreement with the NNLO, perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD), report (pythia, sherpa, etc.) by including the higher-order perturbative contributions the better results are archived. On the other hand as the scale of energy increases, for the LHC energies, the Compton subprocess, i.e., ${q}^{*}+{g}^{*}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\gamma}}^{*}/Z\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{l}^{+}+{l}^{\ensuremath{-}}+q$, has the largest contribution to the differential cross section in the most intervals of some observables, as is expected. The variation of the differential cross section with respect to the various variables such as the invariant mass, the center of mass energy, etc. are discussed. In order to validate our results, we also consider the strong ordering constraint and the KaTie parton-level event generator.

Fiducial Higgs and Drell-Yan distributions at N3LL\u2032+NNLO with RadISH

We present state-of-the-art predictions for transverse observables relevant to colour-singlet production at the LHC, in particular the transverse momentum of the colour singlet in gluon-fusion Higgs production and in neutral Drell-Yan lepton-pair production, as well as the {phi}_{eta}^{ast } observable in Drell Yan. We perform a next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (N3LL) resummation of such observables in momentum space according to the RadISH formalism, consistently including in our prediction all constant terms of relative order {alpha}_s^3 with respect to the Born, thereby achieving N3LL′ accuracy. The calculation is fully exclusive with respect to the Born kinematics, which allows the application of arbitrary fiducial selection cuts on the decay products of the colour singlet. We supplement our results with a transverse-recoil prescription, accounting for dominant classes of subleading-power corrections in a fiducial setup. The resummed predictions are matched with fixed-order differential spectra at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) accuracy. A phenomenological comparison is carried out with 13 TeV LHC data relevant to the Higgs to di-photon channel, as well as to neutral Drell-Yan lepton-pair production. Overall, the inclusion of mathcal{O} ( {alpha}_s^3 ) constant terms, and to a lesser extent of transverse-recoil effects, proves beneficial for the comparison of theoretical predictions to data, leaving a residual theoretical uncertainty in the resummation region at the 2–5% level for Drell-Yan observables, and 5–7% in Higgs production.

Global analysis of the Sivers functions at NLO+NNLL in QCD

We perform global fit to the quark Sivers function within the transverse momentum dependent (TMD) factorization formalism in QCD. We simultaneously fit Sivers asymmetry data from Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS) at COMPASS, HERMES, and JLab, from Drell-Yan lepton pair production at COMPASS, and from W/Z boson at RHIC. This extraction is performed at next-to-leading order (NLO) and next-to-next-to leading logarithmic (NNLL) accuracy. We find excellent agreement between our extracted asymmetry and the experimental data for SIDIS and Drell-Yan lepton pair production, while tension arises when trying to describe the spin asymmetries of W/Z bosons at RHIC. We carefully assess the situation, and we study in details the impact of the RHIC data and their implications through different ways of performing the fit. In addition, we find that the quality of the description of W/Z vector boson asymmetry data could be strongly sensitive to the DGLAP evolution of Qiu-Sterman function, besides the usual TMD evolution. We present discussion on this and the implications for measurements of the transverse-spin asymmetries at the future Electron Ion Collider.

Multiple polylogarithms with algebraic arguments and the two-loop EW-QCD Drell-Yan master integrals

We consider Feynman integrals with algebraic leading singularities and total differentials in $\ensuremath{\epsilon}\text{ }\mathrm{d}\text{ }\mathrm{ln}$ form. We show for the first time that it is possible to evaluate integrals with singularities involving unrationalizable roots in terms of conventional multiple polylogarithms, by either parametric integration or matching the symbol. As our main application, we evaluate the two-loop master integrals relevant to the $\ensuremath{\alpha}{\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s}$ corrections to Drell-Yan lepton pair production at hadron colliders. We optimize our functional basis to allow for fast and stable numerical evaluations in the physical region of phase space.

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

We study the soft and collinear 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 soft and virtual contributions increase the QCD cross section at 14 TeV by 2.7% and 0.2% for the standard choices μR=mH and μR=mH/2 of the renormalization scale, and reduce the scale uncertainty to below ±3%. As by-products, we derive the complete δ(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 D4 for the soft-gluon exponentiation of Higgs-boson and Drell-Yan lepton-pair production.

Strange quark suppression from a simultaneous Monte Carlo analysis of parton distributions and fragmentation functions

We perform the first simultaneous extraction of unpolarized parton distributions and fragmentation functions from a Monte Carlo analysis of inclusive and semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering, Drell-Yan lepton-pair production, and single-inclusive $e^+ e^-$ annihilation data. We use data resampling techniques to thoroughly explore the Bayesian posterior distribution of the extracted functions, and use $k$-means clustering on the parameter samples to identify the configurations that give the best description across all reactions. Inclusion of the semi-inclusive data reveals a strong suppression of the strange quark distribution at parton momentum fractions $x \gtrsim 0.01$, in contrast with the ATLAS observation of enhanced strangeness in $W^\pm$ and $Z$ production at the LHC. Our study reveals significant correlations between the strange quark density and the strange $\to$ kaon fragmentation function needed to simultaneously describe semi-inclusive $K^\pm$ production data from COMPASS and inclusive $K^\pm$ spectra in $e^+ e^-$ annihilation from ALEPH and SLD, as well as between the strange and light antiquark densities in the proton.

DYTurbo: fast predictions for Drell\u2013Yan processes

Drell–Yan lepton pair production processes are extremely important for standard model (SM) precision tests and for beyond the SM searches at hadron colliders. Fast and accurate predictions are essential to enable the best use of the precision measurements of these processes; they are used for parton density fits, for the extraction of fundamental parameters of the SM, and for the estimation of background processes in searches. This paper describes a new numerical program, DYTurbo, for the calculation of the QCD transverse-momentum resummation of Drell–Yan cross sections up to next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy combined with the fixed-order results at next-to-next-to-leading order (mathcal {O}(alpha _{mathrm {S}}^2)), including the full kinematical dependence of the decaying lepton pair with the corresponding spin correlations and the finite-width effects. The DYTurbo program is an improved reimplementation of the DYqT, DYRes and DYNNLO programs, which provides fast and numerically precise predictions through the factorisation of the cross section into production and decay variables, and the usage of quadrature rules based on interpolating functions for the integration over kinematic variables.

On the shape of the [formula omitted] asymmetry

Using data from a recent reanalysis of neutron structure functions extracted from inclusive proton and deuteron deep-inelastic scattering (DIS), we re-examine the constraints on the shape of the d¯−u¯ asymmetry in the proton at large parton momentum fractions x. A global analysis of the proton–neutron structure function difference from BCDMS, NMC, SLAC and Jefferson Lab DIS measurements, and of Fermilab Drell-Yan lepton-pair production cross sections, suggests that existing data can be well described with d¯>u¯ for all values of x currently accessible. We compare the shape of the fitted d¯−u¯ distributions with expectations from nonperturbative models based on chiral symmetry breaking, which can be tested by upcoming Drell-Yan data from the SeaQuest experiment at larger values of x.

Matching factorization theorems with an inverse-error weighting

We propose a new fast method to match factorization theorems applicable in different kinematical regions, such as the transverse-momentum-dependent and the collinear factorization theorems in Quantum Chromodynamics. At variance with well-known approaches relying on their simple addition and subsequent subtraction of double-counted contributions, ours simply builds on their weighting using the theory uncertainties deduced from the factorization theorems themselves. This allows us to estimate the unknown complete matched cross section from an inverse-error-weighted average. The method is simple and provides an evaluation of the theoretical uncertainty of the matched cross section associated with the uncertainties from the power corrections to the factorization theorems (additional uncertainties, such as the nonperturbative ones, should be added for a proper comparison with experimental data). Its usage is illustrated with several basic examples, such as Z boson, W boson, H0 boson and Drell–Yan lepton-pair production in hadronic collisions, and compared to the state-of-the-art Collins–Soper–Sterman subtraction scheme. It is also not limited to the transverse-momentum spectrum, and can straightforwardly be extended to match any (un)polarized cross section differential in other variables, including multi-differential measurements.

The Sivers asymmetry in Drell–Yan production at the J/Ψ peak at COMPASS

The abundant production of lepton pairs via J/Ψ creation at COMPASS, π±p↑→J/ΨX→ℓ+ℓ−X, allows a measurement of the transverse single spin asymmetry, ANJ/Ψ, generated by the Sivers effect. The crucial issue of the sign change of the Sivers function in Drell–Yan lepton pair production, with respect to Semi Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering processes, can be addressed in a different context. Assuming that the Sivers asymmetry is related to a universal and intrinsic property of the proton, predictions for the expected magnitude of ANJ/Ψ, which turns out to be large, are given. A comparison with the suggested measurement of this single spin asymmetry – an important quantity by itself – should give valuable information.