Two-loop soft anomalous dimensions and next-to-next-to-leading-logarithm resummation for heavy quark production

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Jun 12;102(23):232003. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.232003. Epub 2009 Jun 12.

Abstract

I present results for two-loop soft anomalous dimensions for heavy quark production which control soft-gluon resummation at next-to-next-to-leading-logarithm accuracy. I derive an explicit expression for the exact result and study it numerically for top quark production via e(+)e(-)-->tt, and I construct a surprisingly simple but very accurate approximation. I show that the two-loop soft anomalous dimensions with massive quarks display a simple proportionality relation to the one-loop result only in the limit of vanishing quark mass. I also discuss the extension of the calculation to single top and top pair production in hadron colliders.