Two-loop QCD corrections to top quark decay

We present results for the production of a top pair in association with a W-boson at next-to-leading order. We have implemented this process into the parton-level integrator MCFM including the decays of both the top quarks and the W-bosons with full spin correlations. Although the cross section for this process is small, it is a Standard Model source of same-sign lepton events that must be accounted for in many new physics searches. For a particular analysis of same-sign lept...

A critical assessment of the available calculations of the top quark width is presented. QCD corrections, the finite mass of the $b$ quark and the effect of the $W$ width are included as well as the electroweak corrections. The relative importance of these corrections is demonstrated for the realistic range of top masses. For the QCD corrected decay rate we use the formulae from \cite{JK1} and include the electroweak correction taken from \cite{DS}. Our results differ from th...

The status of the theoretical predictions for the top-anti top production in hadronic collisions is shortly reviewed, paying a articular attention to the analytic calculation of the two-loop QCD corrections to the parton-level matrix elements.

We present the first complete high-precision QCD corrections to the inclusive decay width $\mathrm{\Gamma}_t$, the $W$-helicity fractions $f_{\mathrm{L,R,0}}$ and semi-inclusive distributions for the top-quark decay process $t \rightarrow b + W^+ + X_{\mathrm{\tiny QCD}}$ at NNNLO in the strong coupling constant $\alpha_s$. In particular, the pure NNNLO QCD correction decreases the $\mathrm{\Gamma}_t$ by about $0.8\%$ of the previous NNLO result at the top-quark pole mass sca...

I present the two-loop QCD corrections to the production of a massive quark-anti-quark pair in the massless quark-anti-quark annihilation channel. The result is obtained as a combination of a deep expansion in the mass around the high energy limit and of a numerical integration of a system of differential equations. The primary application of the outcome and developed methods is top quark pair production at the Large Hadron Collider.

We present the NLO QCD corrections to the processes p p and p anti-p to W+ W- b anti-b including leptonic decays of the W bosons. Non-resonant contributions as well as diagrams with doubly resonant and singly resonant top quark propagators are fully taken into account. We employ the narrow width approximation to perform the decays of the W bosons; spin correlations are however preserved. We also calculate observables relevant for top quark mass measurements, and study the imp...

We present analytic results of the two-loop master integrals for hadronic $tW$ production that contain two massive propagators. For the planar integral family, we succeed in constructing the canonical basis, so the results are written in terms of multiple polylogarithms. The master integrals in the non-planar integral families have been calculated by Taylor series expansion around $m_W^2=0$. Even with this simplification, there are multiple square roots involved in the differ...

The production of top-antitop-quark pairs at hadron colliders is interesting both in its own right as signal process, but also as background to many searches for new physics. The corresponding predictions aim at the precision level of few per cent, rendering not only the inclusion of radiative corrections of the strong and electroweak interactions relevant, but also of off-shell and finite-width effects originating from the top-quark decays t -> b W -> b l \nu_l / qq'. We rep...

In this paper we present the results of the implementation of the decay t -> b f1 f1 into the SANC system (f1 is a massless fermion). The new aspect of the work is the combination of QCD and EW corrections. All calculations are done at the one-loop level in the Standard Model. We give a detailed account of the new procedure - the forming of a class of JAW,WA functions. These functions are related to the procedure of extraction of infra-red and mass-shell singular divergences....

We present technical aspects of next-to-next-to-leading order calculations for heavy-to-light decays such as top quark decay, semileptonic b quark decay into a u quark, muon decay, and radiative decays like b -> s gamma. Algebraic reduction of integrals to a set of master integrals is described, methods of determining the master integrals are presented, and a complete list of master integrals is given. As a sample application, the top quark decay width is calculated to O(alph...