RG-improved single-particle inclusive cross sections and forward-backward asymmetry in $ t\bar{t} $ production at hadron colliders

Abstract

We use techniques from soft-collinear effective theory (SCET) to derive\nrenormalization-group improved predictions for single-particle inclusive (1PI)\nobservables in top-quark pair production at hadron colliders. In particular, we\nstudy the top-quark transverse-momentum and rapidity distributions, the\nforward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron, and the total cross section at\nNLO+NNLL order in resummed perturbation theory and at approximate NNLO in fixed\norder. We also perform a detailed analysis of power corrections to the leading\nterms in the threshold expansion of the partonic hard-scattering kernels. We\nconclude that, although the threshold expansion in 1PI kinematics is\nsusceptible to numerically significant power corrections, its predictions for\nthe total cross section are in good agreement with those obtained by\nintegrating the top-pair invariant-mass distribution in pair invariant-mass\nkinematics, as long as a certain set of subleading terms appearing naturally\nwithin the SCET formalism is included.\n