NNLO QCD subtraction for top-antitop production in the $q\bar{q}$ channel

Abstract

We present the computation of the double real and real-virtual contributions to top-antitop pair production in the quark-antiquark channel at leading colour. The $q\bar{q}\to t\bar{t}g$ amplitudes contributing to the real-virtual part are computed with OpenLoops, and their numerical stability in the soft and collinear regions is found to be sufficiently high to perform a realistic NNLO calculation in double precision. The subtraction terms required at real-real and real-virtual levels are constructed within the antenna subtraction formalism extended to deal with the presence of coloured massive final state particles. We show that those subtraction terms approximate the real-real and real-virtual matrix elements in all their singular limits.

Comments: 54 pages, 10 figures