A UNIFIED APPROACH TO NNLO SOFT AND VIRTUAL CORRECTIONS IN ELECTROWEAK, HIGGS, QCD, AND SUSY PROCESSES

Abstract

I present a unified approach to calculating the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) soft and virtual QCD corrections to cross-sections for electroweak, Higgs, QCD, and SUSY processes. I derive master formulas that can be used for any of these processes in hadron–hadron and lepton–hadron collisions. The formulas are based on a unified threshold resummation formalism and can be applied to both total and differential cross-sections for processes with either simple or complex color flows and for various factorization schemes and kinematics. As a test of the formalism, I rederive known NNLO results for Drell–Yan and Higgs production, deep inelastic scattering, and W+γ production, and I obtain expressions for several two-loop anomalous dimensions and other quantities needed in next-to-next-to-leading-logarithm (NNLL) resummations. I also present new results for the production of supersymmetric charged Higgs bosons; massive electroweak vector bosons; photons; heavy quarks in lepton–hadron and hadron–hadron collisions and in flavor-changing neutral current processes; jets; and squarks and gluinos. The NNLO soft and virtual corrections are often dominant, especially near threshold, and they reduce the scale dependence of the cross-section. Thus, a unified approach to these corrections is important in the search for new physics at present and future colliders.