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Identified Hadron Production at Hadron Colliders in Next-to-Next-to-Leading-Order QCD

Michał Czakon

Terry Generet and Alexander Mitov

Rene Poncelet

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 171902 – Published 21 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mhkl-vt96

Abstract

In this Letter we calculate for the first time the next-to-next-to leading order (NNLO) QCD corrections to identified hadron production at hadron colliders. The inclusion of the NNLO correction has an important impact on all observables considered in this Letter. Higher order corrections reduce scale uncertainty and in almost all cases are moderate. Overall, good perturbative convergence is observed across kinematics and observables. The uncertainty due to missing higher orders is relatively small and, in many cases, smaller than the experimental uncertainty. The largest source of theoretical uncertainty at present is from the knowledge of the nonperturbative parton-to-hadron fragmentation functions (FFs), which dwarfs the scale uncertainty in most kinematic ranges. The inclusion of NNLO corrections demonstrates the precision studies potential of this class of observables. To fully realize this potential, however, a new generation of improved fragmentation functions may be needed. The results of the present Letter will enable global fits of FFs with NNLO precision.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 171902– Published 21 October, 2025
  • Received 7 July 2025
  • Revised 12 September 2025
  • Accepted 25 September 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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