Determining the Threshold Excess in Top-Quark Pair Production through a Global PDF Analysis
Abstract
We present an empirical determination of the threshold excess Δ in top-quark pair production, taking full account of correlated uncertainties with PDFs, the top-quark mass mt and the strong coupling αs(mZ). We extract Δ from a variety of differential tt̅ cross-section measurements by ATLAS and CMS at 8 and 13 TeV, using theoretical predictions of the tt̅ continuum up to NNLO QCD accuracy, including an estimate of missing higher order uncertainties and NLO EW corrections. At 8 TeV we see no evidence of a significant threshold excess, but at 13 TeV obtain results above the NNLO QCD tt̅ background at just over two σ when we combine all the available measurements. We also find evidence of a strong correlation between Δ and mt, which must be taken into account if the uncertainty on any threshold excess is to be estimated reliably.
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BibTeX
@misc{ball2026determining,
title = {{Determining the Threshold Excess in Top-Quark Pair Production through a Global PDF Analysis}},
author = {Richard D. Ball and Jaco ter Hoeve},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.21479},
eprint = {2610.21479},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21479},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Determining the Threshold Excess in Top-Quark Pair Production through a Global PDF Analysis
AU - Richard D. Ball
AU - Jaco ter Hoeve
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.21479
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21479
AB - We present an empirical determination of the threshold excess Δ in top-quark pair production, taking full account of correlated uncertainties with PDFs, the top-quark mass m_t and the strong coupling α_s(m_Z). We extract Δ from a variety of differential tt̅ cross-section measurements by ATLAS and CMS at 8 and 13 TeV, using theoretical predictions of the tt̅ continuum up to NNLO QCD accuracy, including an estimate of missing higher order uncertainties and NLO EW corrections. At 8 TeV we see no evidence of a significant threshold excess, but at 13 TeV obtain results above the NNLO QCD tt̅ background at just over two σ when we combine all the available measurements. We also find evidence of a strong correlation between Δ and m_t, which must be taken into account if the uncertainty on any threshold excess is to be estimated reliably.
ER -