Triphoton production at hadron colliders in NNLO QCD

We present next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) QCD corrections to the production of three isolated photons in hadronic collisions at the fully differential level. We employ qT subtraction within MATRIX and an efficient implementation of analytic two-loop amplitudes in the leading-colour approximation to achieve the first on-the-fly calculation for this process at NNLO accuracy. Numerical results are presented for proton-proton collisions at energies ranging from 7 TeV to 100 TeV. We find full agreement with the 8 TeV results of Ref. [1] and confirm that NNLO corrections are indispensable to describe ATLAS 8 TeV data. In addition, we demonstrate the significance of NNLO corrections for future precision studies of triphoton production at higher collision energies. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

In this study, NNLO QCD corrections to the production of three isolated photons in hadronic collisions are presented at the fully differential level. The importance of NNLO corrections for describing ATLAS 8TeV data and future precision studies of triphoton production at higher collision energies is demonstrated through numerical results. The study confirms the indispensability of NNLO corrections for achieving accurate predictions in high-energy physics experiments.