On the NNLO QCD corrections to single-top production at the LHC

Understand

We present a fully-differential calculation of the NNLO QCD corrections to the t-channel mechanism for producing single top quarks at the LHC.

• We work in the structure function approximation, computing QCD corrections to the light- and heavy-quark lines separately and neglecting the dynamical cross-talk between the two.
• The neglected contribution, which appears at NNLO for the first time, is color-suppressed and is expected to be sub-dominant.
• Within this approximation, we find that, for the total cross section, NNLO QCD corrections are in the few percent range and, therefore, are comparable to NLO QCD corrections.