$Z$ boson radiative decays to a $P$-wave quarkonium at NNLO and LL accuracy

Abstract

In this work, we study the radiative decay of $Z$ boson to a $P$-wave quarkonium $H$ in association with a photon, where $H$ can be $\chi_{QJ}$, $h_Q$ with $Q=c,b$ and $J=0,1,2$. The helicity amplitudes and the unpolarized decay widths are evaluated up to QCD next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) within the framework of nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD). For the first time, we check the NRQCD factorization for $h_Q$ exclusive production at two-loop order. The leading logarithms (LL) of $m_Z^2/m_Q^2$ in the leading-twist short-distance coefficients, which may potentially ruin the perturbative convergence, are resummed to all orders of $\alpha_s$ by employing the light-cone factorization. We find the radiative corrections are considerable for $\chi_{Q2}$ and $h_Q$ productions, while are moderate or even minor for other channels. We also notice that the LL resummation can change the leading-order predictions for decay widths by more than 25\% for $\chi_{c0,2}$ and $h_c$ productions, and by around 50\% for $\chi_{c1}$ production. However, effects of the LL resummation on the next-to-leading-order and NNLO predictions are notably mitigated. Some phenomenological explorations are also performed.