Top-quark pair production at the LHC: fully differential QCD predictions at NNLO

Abstract

Abstract We report on a new fully differential calculation of the next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) QCD radiative corrections to the production of top-quark pairs at hadron colliders. The calculation is performed by using the q T subtraction formalism to handle and cancel infrared singularities in real and virtual contributions. The computation is implemented in the Matrix framework, thereby allowing us to efficiently compute arbitrary infrared-safe observables for stable top quarks. We present NNLO predictions for several single- and double-differential kinematical distributions in pp collisions at the centre-of-mass energy $$ \sqrt{s}=13 $$ s = 13 TeV, and we compare them with recent LHC data by the CMS collaboration.