Accurate prediction of the Drell-Yan ϕη* distribution in wide dilepton mass and rapidity ranges in pp collisions through NNLO+N3LL

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents high-accuracy predictions for the differential cross ss as a function of the key observable ϕ η * of the neutral-current Drell-Yan (DY) dilepton production in proton-proton (pp) collisions. The differential distributions for the ϕ η * are presented by using the state-of-the-art predictions from the combined calculations of fixed-order perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) corrections at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) accuracy and resummation of large logarithmic terms at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) and next-to-NNLL (N3LL) accuracies, i.e., NNLO+NNLL and NNLO+N3LL, respectively. The predicted distributions are reported for a thorough set of the DY dilepton invariant mass m ll ranges, spanning a wide kinematic region of 50 < m ll < 1000 GeV both near and away from the Z-boson mass peak, and rapidity y ll ranges in the central detector acceptance region of ∣y ll ∣ < 2.4. The differential ϕ η * distributions in the wide m ll and y ll ranges offer stringent tests to assess the reliability of the predictions, where the m ll and y ll are closely correlated with the parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the incoming partons. The matched predictions through NNLO+N3LL are observed to provide good description of the 13 TeV pp collision data for the ϕ η * (including the dilepton transverse momentum p T ll as well) distributions in almost the entire m ll and y ll ranges, apart from the intermediate- to high- ϕ η * region in the lowest mass range 50–76 GeV which is assessed to constitute a challenge for the presented predictions. The predictions at NNLO+N3LL are also reported at 14 TeV for the upcoming high-luminosity running era of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in which increasing amount of data is expected to require more accurate and precise theoretical description. The most recent PDF models MSHT20 and CT18, in addition to the NNPDF3.1, are tested for the first time for the matched predictions of the ϕ η * distribution. The differential distributions by the combined predictions through NNLO QCD+NLO EW are finally provided to enable assessment of the impact of the EW corrections for the ϕ η * .