Slepton pair production at next-to-leading power

Abstract

Near threshold, cross sections for the production of heavy particles are sensitive to large logarithmic terms, which must be resummed to all orders in perturbation theory. Current state-of-the art calculations for inclusive slepton pair production at hadron colliders has focused on higher-order logarithms in the leading power of the threshold variable. Here, we evaluate the next-to-leading power contribution in the threshold variable to leading logarithmic accuracy. We find that the next-to-leading power contributions can be significant compared to the next-to-leading logarithmic terms at leading power, and that existing calculations underestimate the scale error for large slepton masses. We include results for a potential future FCC-hh machine at $\sqrt{s}=85$ TeV.