Theoretical uncertainties on QCD computations and the divergence of the perturbative expansion

Abstract

We analyze the divergent behaviour of the perturbative expansion in QCD, focusing on some well-known sources of divergence such as renormalons, instantons and the Landau pole divergence. We determine at which perturbative order each of these sources of divergence becomes dominant. In particular, we consider the cross section of Higgs and top production in gluon fusion at the LHC and we construct a model for the theoretical uncertainty on the missing higher orders in the perturbative expansion. We compare our model with some other existing models for theoretical uncertainty.

Comments: 54 pages, 15 figures. Master's thesis. Supervisors: S. Forte, G. Ridolfi. Removed redundant introductory parts, sorted references, corrected typos