The Quark Beam Function at Two Loops

Abstract

In differential measurements at a hadron collider, collinear initial-state radiation is described by process-independent beam functions. They are the field-theoretic analog of initial-state parton showers. Depending on the measured observable they are differential in the virtuality and/or transverse momentum of the colliding partons in addition to the usual longitudinal momentum fraction. Perturbatively, the beam functions can be calculated by matching them onto standard quark and gluon parton distribution functions. We calculate the inclusive virtuality-dependent quark beam function at NNLO, which is relevant for any observables probing the virtuality of the incoming partons, including N-jettiness and beam thrust. For such observables, our results are an important ingredient in the resummation of large logarithms at N3LL order, and provide all contributions enhanced by collinear t-channel singularities at NNLO for quark-initiated processes in analytic form. We perform the calculation in both Feynman and axial gauge and use two different methods to evaluate the discontinuity of the two-loop Feynman diagrams, providing nontrivial checks of the calculation. As part of our results we reproduce the known two-loop QCD splitting functions and confirm at two loops that the virtuality-dependent beam and final-state jet functions have the same anomalous dimension.