Massive 2- and 3-loop corrections to hard scattering processes in QCD

Abstract

With the increasing experimental precision available at colliders, higher-order perturbative calculations are required to reduce the theory uncertainty in order to extract crucial QCD parameters, such as the strong coupling constant, to the required precision, often the order of one percent. For this reason, the contributions of the massive charm and bottom quarks need to be taken into account in hadronic processes such as deep-inelastic scattering. In this thesis, we calculate to order $\alpha_s^3$ the two-mass contributions to the twist-two polarized operator matrix elements $A_{gg,Q}^{(3)}$ and $A_{Qq}^{(3),PS}$ as functions of the heavy quark mass ratio. We discuss the mathematical structure of these objects and discuss their phenomenological importance for the variable flavour number scheme and mathematical and computer-algebraic aspects of their calculation. We further address the impact of the heavy quarks to the scheme-invariant evolution of structure functions and introduce a Fortran library for their evaluation. We also discuss a computer algebra implementation of a solver for partial linear difference equations.