NNLL qT resummation and beyond
Thomas Lübbert (University of Hamburg)

qT spectra of vector bosons at hadron colliders provide important tests of the Standard Model. In the crucial region, where the boson invariant mass M is much smaller than its transverse momentum qT, the spectra are very sensitive to initial state radiation. Applying soft-collinear effective theory, we discuss a universal framework for its description and determine the relevant perturbative operators up to next-to-next-to leading order (NNLO).

For any heavy color neutral final state, these results enable us to resum logarithms of qT/M up to next-to-next-to leading logarithmic (NNLL) accuracy and to consistently match to a fixed order calculation. For a selection of processes this is implemented in the program CuTe. As an important example, we determine the qT spectrum of Drell-Yan production to NNLO+NNLL accuracy and confront these results with LHC data.