0911.0681 (Thomas Becher et al.)

Direct photon production with effective field theory    [PDF]

Thomas Becher, Matthew D. Schwartz

The production of hard photons in hadronic collisions is studied using
Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET). This is the first application of SCET
to a physical, observable cross section involving energetic partons in more
than two directions. A factorization formula is derived which involves a
non-trivial interplay of the angular dependence in the hard and soft functions,
both quark and gluon jet functions, and multiple partonic channels. The
relevant hard, jet and soft functions are computed to one loop and their
anomalous dimensions are determined to three loops. The final resummed
inclusive direct photon distribution is valid to next-to-next-to-leading
logarithmic order (NNLL), one order beyond previous work. The result is
improved by including non-logarithmic terms and photon isolation cuts through
matching, and compared to Tevatron data and to fixed order results at the
Tevatron and the LHC. The resummed cross section has a significantly smaller
theoretical uncertainty than the next-to-leading fixed-order result,
particularly at high transverse momentum.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/0911.0681