Abstract
This paper presents high-accuracy predictions for the differential cross sections as a function of the key observable φ*η of the neutral-current Drell-Yan (DY) dilepton production in proton-proton (pp) collisions. The differential distributions for the φ*η are presented by using the state-of-the-art predictions from the combined calculations of fixed-order perturbative QCD corrections at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) accuracy and resummation of large logarithmic terms at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) and next-to-NNLL (N3LL) accuracies, i.e., NNLO+NNLL and NNLO+N3LL, respectively. The predicted distributions are reported for a thorough set of the DY dilepton invariant mass mll ranges, spanning a wide kinematic region of 50 < mll< 1000 GeV both near and away from the Z-boson mass peak, and rapidity yll ranges in the central detector acceptance region of |yll| < 2.4. The differential φ*η distributions in the wide mll and yll ranges offer stringent tests to assess the reliability of the predictions, where the mll and yll are closely correlated with the parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the incoming partons. The merged predictions through NNLO+N3LL are observed to provide good description of the 13 TeV pp collision data for the φ*η (including the dilepton transverse momentum pll
T as well) distributions in almost the entire mll and yll ranges, apart from the intermediate- to high-φ*η region in the lowest mass range 50–76 GeV which is assessed to constitute a challenge for the presented predictions. The merged predictions at NNLO+N3LL are also reported at 14 TeV for the upcoming high-luminosity running era of the LHC, in which increasing amount of data is expected to require more accurate and precise theoretical description. The most recent PDF models MSHT20 and CT18 are tested for the first time in addition to the NNPDF3.1 exploiting the merged φ*η predictions.
Measurement of the Q2 dependence of the charged and neutral current cross sections in e±p scattering at HERA
