Higher-order corrections in $t\bar{t}\gamma$ cross sections

Abstract

We study higher-order QCD corrections for the associated production of a top-antitop quark pair and a photon ($t\bar{t}\gamma$ production) in proton-proton collisions. We calculate the approximate NNLO cross section, with second-order soft-gluon corrections added to the complete NLO result, including uncertainties from scale dependence and from parton distributions. We compare our results to recent measurements from the LHC, and find that the soft-gluon corrections provide improved agreement with the data. We also calculate differential distributions in top-quark transverse momentum and rapidity.

Comments: 10 pages, 4 figures, 1 table