Threshold corrections to rapidity distributions of Z and W^± bosons beyond N²LO at hadron colliders

Abstract

Threshold enhanced perturbative QCD corrections to rapidity distributions of Z and W^± bosons at hadron colliders are presented using the Sudakov resummed cross sections at N³LO level. We have used renormalization group invariance and the mass factorization theorem that these hard scattering cross sections satisfy to construct the QCD amplitudes. We show that these higher order threshold QCD corrections stabilize the theoretical predictions for vector boson production at the LHC under variations of both renormalization and factorization scales.