Revisiting QCD corrections to the forward-backward charge asymmetry of heavy quarks in electron-positron collisions at the Z pole: really a problem?

Abstract

We review in some detail the QCD corrections to the measurement of the forward-backward charge asymmetry of heavy quarks in the ${\mathrm{e}}^{+}{\mathrm{e}}^{-}\to \mathrm{Q}\overline{\mathrm{Q}}(\mathrm{g})$ process at the Z pole. We show that the size of these corrections can be reduced by an order of magnitude by using simple cuts on jet acollinearity. Such a reduction is expected to lead to systematic uncertainties at the $\Delta {\mathrm{A}}_{\mathrm{FB}}^{0,\mathrm{Q}}\approx 10^{-4}$ level, opening up the path to high precision electroweak measurements with heavy flavors at future high luminosity ${\mathrm{e}}^{+}{\mathrm{e}}^{-}$ colliders like the FCC-ee.

Comments: 21 pages, 4 figures