High-energy resummation at the LHC: the case of Drell-Yan processes

Abstract

We first review the general framework which enables one to resum high-energy logarithms in hadronic processes, both in the evolution of parton densities and in the coefficient functions. We then present an all-order calculation in perturbative QCD of the inclusive Drell Yan and vector boson production in hadron-hadron collisions, in the limit where centre of mass energy is much bigger than the invariant mass of the final state. Our calculation resums leading non-trivial logarithms in the ratio of these two scales. We also study the phenomenological relevance of the high-energy corrections for Drell-Yan processes at the LHC. We find that the resummation corrects the NNLO result by a few percent, for values of the invariant mass of the lepton pair below 100 GeV. Corrections to W, Z production are expected to be of the same order.

Comments: 5 pages, Talk given at 10th DESY Workshop on Elementary Particle Theory: Loops and Legs 2010, Worlitz, Germany 25-30 April 2010