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(& alpha;3S)) 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/& gamma; *, W & PLUSMN; production and decay, including the W & PLUSMN; and Z/& gamma; * 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.& COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons .org /licenses /by /4 .0/). Funded by SCOAP3.

Automated summary

This research focuses on Drell-Yan lepton pairs produced in hadronic collisions and provides high-accuracy predictions for the transverse momentum distribution and fiducial cross sections in the small qT region. They resum the logarithmically enhanced contributions up to the N4LL accuracy and include the N3LO hard-virtual coefficient with an approximation of the N4LO coefficients. The massive axial-vector and vector contributions up to three loops are also taken into account. Numerical results for various processes at LHC energies are shown, along with estimates of uncertainties.