• Accepted Paper

Four-loop quark-to-quark splitting function in QCD

Thomas Gehrmann, Andreas von Manteuffel, Vasily Sotnikov, and Tong-Zhi Yang

Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 9 November, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/n6lg-xbks

Abstract

The scale evolution of parton distributions is governed by splitting functions. We compute the four-loop pure-singlet contribution to the quark-to-quark splitting function in perturbative QCD. Together with the known non-singlet contribution, our result completes the quark-to-quark splitting function at this order. We confirm previous partial results and obtain, for the first time, a fully analytic expression valid for all momentum fractions. We examine its behavior at small momentum fractions and provide precise numerical representations suitable for parton evolution.

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