Total Top-Quark Pair-Production Cross Section at Hadron Colliders Through $\mathcal{O}({\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{S}^{4})$

Total Top-Quark Pair-Production Cross Section at Hadron Colliders Through $O (α_{S}^{4})$

Michał Czakon, Paul Fiedler, and Alexander Mitov

Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 252004 – Published 18 June 2013

Abstract

We compute the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) quantum chromodynamics (QCD) correction to the total cross section for the reaction $g g \to t \bar{t} + X$ . Together with the partonic channels we computed previously, the result derived in this Letter completes the set of NNLO QCD corrections to the total top pair-production cross section at hadron colliders. Supplementing the fixed order results with soft-gluon resummation with next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, we estimate that the theoretical uncertainty of this observable due to unknown higher order corrections is about 3% at the LHC and 2.2% at the Tevatron. We observe a good agreement between the standard model predictions and the available experimental measurements. The very high theoretical precision of this observable allows a new level of scrutiny in parton distribution functions and new physics searches.