QCD corrections to the production of a heavy quark pair plus a hard photon in $e^+ e^-$ annihilation

Abstract

We present complete results for the $O(α_s)$ corrections to the production of a heavy quark pair plus a hard photon, in $e^+ e^-$ annihilation, including both photon and $Z$ intermediate states. Virtual corrections are calculated analytically in $4 - 2 ε$ dimensions, together with the soft approximation to the real emission diagrams. After cancellation of infrared divergences, real and virtual contributions are combined numerically to obtain the cross section for the production of two heavy quark jets plus a hard photon in next-to-leading order. The resulting fully differential cross section can be used to construct arbitrary distributions with the desired experimental cuts.