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# Higgs–Boson Production Induced by Bottom Quarks

## I Higgs Bosons at the LHC

The combined LEP precision measurements  suggest the existence of a light Higgs boson. In the case of a single Standard Model Higgs boson the LHC promises multiple coverage for any Higgs boson mass, which will enable us to measure its different decay modes and extract the couplings . For a supersymmetric Higgs sector this coverage has to rely on fewer Higgs boson decay channels . This is a direct consequence of the structure of the Higgs sector: while the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) predicts a light Higgs boson, it also predicts an enhancement of the coupling to down-type fermions, at the expense of the branching fractions to gauge bosons. This enhancement is an outcome from the two Higgs doublet structure in the MSSM: one doublet is needed to give mass to up-type, the other to down-type fermions. The vacuum expectation values of the two doublets are different, parameterized by $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =v_2/v_1`$. In addition to a light scalar Higgs boson, the two Higgs doublet model includes a heavy scalar, a pseudoscalar, and a charged Higgs boson. None of these additional particles have a mass bounded from above, apart from triviality or unitarity bounds.

Of course, observables linked to properties of a light Higgs boson can serve as a probe if a new scalar particle is indeed consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson . There is, however, only one way to conclusively tell the supersymmetric Higgs sector from its Standard Model counterpart: to discover the additional heavy Higgs bosons and determine their properties.

At the LHC, the possible enhancement of down-type fermion Yukawa couplings by powers of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ can render the search for a heavy scalar and pseudoscalar Higgs boson promising. For small values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ the Yukawa coupling of the charged Higgs boson is governed by the top quark mass $`m_t/\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, whereas for larger values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ the bottom Yukawa coupling $`m_b\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ dominates. While the chances of finding a heavy Higgs boson with a small value of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ at the LHC are rather slim, the discovery of all heavy Higgs scalars in the large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta 10`$ regime is likely. This reflects the fact that the reach of the LHC for charged and neutral Higgs bosons is to a large degree owed to scattering processes which involve incoming bottom quarks. The completely exclusive processes are

$$gg\overline{b}tH^{}gg\overline{b}b\mathrm{\Phi },$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }=h^0,H^0,A^0`$ denotes any neutral scalar Higgs boson. From an experimental point of view, the identification of these final state bottom jets is tedious, because the dominant contribution comes from phase space configurations where the incoming gluons split into two collinear bottom quarks. The bottom quark rapidity distribution peaks at rapidities around two and the transverse momentum distributions around the bottom quark mass. After adding in the efficiency for a bottom tag this becomes a heavy price to pay in the analysis. Therefore one usually prefers to look for more or less inclusive channels

$$gbtH^{}gbb\mathrm{\Phi }b\overline{b}\mathrm{\Phi }.$$
(2)
At this point we do not explicitly discuss the bottom–induced inclusive channels $`b\overline{b}W^+H^{}`$  and $`bgtW^{}`$ , which are both known to next-to-leading order QCD, because their impact on the discovery potential of the LHC is not drastic. We emphasize, however, that our argument will hold for them the same way we apply it to the processes in eq.(2).

All bottom–inclusive channels suffer from an additional uncertainty: the choice of the factorization scale of the bottom parton. In contrast to the gluon density, the dependence of the bottom parton density on the factorization scale is large even for scales above $`𝒪(100\mathrm{GeV})`$. Recently, it has been observed in higher order calculations , that varying the bottom factorization scale around a smaller central value yields a more stable perturbative behavior. The same choice of scales can resolve the discrepancy between the total inclusive and exclusive rate, which is most prominent for the production channel $`b\overline{b}\mathrm{\Phi }`$. However, choosing scales according to perturbative behavior is difficult, because most processes include inherent cancellations between different contributions, and it is hard to define which contributions actually have to be stable. Instead of this somewhat soft argument, we will derive an appropriate bottom factorization scale from the kinematics of the exclusive production process. In the following two sections we first investigate charged Higgs boson production, because it involves only one incoming bottom quark and two heavy central decay products. In Section V we will then generalize our result to neutral Higgs boson production and compare it to single top quark production.

Conventions: Throughout this paper we show consistent leading order cross section predictions, including the respective one loop coupling constant, running heavy quark masses, and CTEQ parton densities. Unless stated otherwise, we assume $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =30`$ for all MSSM processes. The exclusive cross sections are quoted with a massive $`4.6\mathrm{GeV}`$ bottom quark in the matrix element and the phase space, while the bottom Yukawa coupling is set to the running bottom quark mass.

## II Bottom Parton Scattering at the LHC

Heavy flavor–induced search channels for supersymmetric Higgs bosons have been explored for many years . To begin with the charged Higgs boson, three search modes have been investigated: (1) charged Higgs bosons can be pair produced in a Drell–Yan type process, mediated by a weak interaction vertex . Moreover, they can be pair produced at tree level in bottom quark scattering  or through a one loop amplitude in gluon fusion . (2) One charged Higgs boson can be produced together with a $`W`$ boson via scattering of two bottom quarks or in gluon fusion . (3) The charged Higgs boson can be produced in association with a top quark, which seems to be the most promising search channel . The charged Higgs boson can be detected either decaying to a top and a bottom quark  or decaying to a tau lepton and a neutrino . Both LHC collaborations have tried to reproduce these phenomenological analyses, most successfully in the case of the decay to tau leptons . However, these analyses have to be taken with a grain of salt, if they rely on the standard Monte Carlo generators, because some do not include a running bottom Yukawa coupling. From the next-to-leading order QCD calculations  we know that using the bottom pole mass as the Yukawa coupling severely overestimates the rates, as one would expect from what we know about Higgs boson decays to bottom quarks***We can compare these next-to-leading SUSY-QCD calculations  to the usual heavy parton subtraction schemes which add the exclusive and the inclusive channels : for large final state masses, the higher order calculation of the inclusive channel is just the perturbatively consistent extension of the latter..

The case of neutral scalar Higgs bosons in the MSSM has been discussed in similar detail. In the Standard Model the inclusive production process $`b\overline{b}\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is a small correction to the inclusive gluon fusion channel . In a supersymmetry context, and in particular for large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, the bottom quark–induced process dominates gluon fusion . The typical Higgs decays are the same as for a light Standard Model Higgs boson, except for heavy MSSM scalars, where decays to muon or tau pairs are most promising . Additional problems occur in the so-called intense coupling regime, i.e. the region with an intermediate pseudoscalar Higgs boson mass and strong mixing effects . The two scalar Higgs bosons can be detected and possibly be resolved in weak boson fusion with a subsequent decay to $`\tau `$ pairs ; unfortunately, for large values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ the mass splitting becomes too small to distinguish the two mass peaks. In that region, the most promising way to search for and separate the heavy Higgs states is the production process involving $`b`$ jets with the Higgs bosons decaying to muons . To distinguish the gluon fusion process from the bottom quark–induced production, one can require observation of only one final state bottom quark, i.e. using the partly inclusive channel $`gbb\mathrm{\Phi }`$ .

Motivated by this vast number of analyses in the MSSM Higgs sector we turn to the simplest process available: charged Higgs boson production in association with a top quark involves only one incoming bottom quark and is an appropriate starting point to understand the issue of bottom partons at the LHC. The features of the exclusive and the inclusive charged Higgs boson production process

$$gg\overline{b}tH^{}gbtH^{}$$
(3)
have been investigated in detail in Ref. . Let us briefly review the most important observations:

For reasons described above, the searches for charged Higgs bosons (decaying to tau leptons) at the LHC usually do not require the observation of a final state bottom quark. The exclusive process $`gg\overline{b}tH^{}`$ is then dominated by collinear splitting of one of the gluons into a bottom quark pair:

$$\frac{d\sigma }{dp_{T,b}}|_{\mathrm{asympt}}\frac{p_{T,b}}{p_{T,b}^2+m_b^2}\sigma |_{\mathrm{asympt}}\mathrm{log}\left[\left(\frac{p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}}{m_b}\right)^2+1\right]$$
(4)
These logarithms in the total cross section can be resummed, which is precisely the definition of bottom partons . The factorization scale of the bottom partons is defined as the maximum transverse bottom quark momentum up to which the asymptotic form of the cross section is assumed to hold, and up to which the logarithms $`\mathrm{log}p_{T,b}/m_b`$ are then resummed. This means that in eq.(4) one can identify $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}`$ with $`\mu _{F,b}`$. If we assume $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}m_b`$, which as we will see is true for all processes we consider, the numerical value for the bottom quark mass will have no impact on our argument — we could neglect it altogether . The factorization scale is per se an artificial parameter which has to vanish after including all orders of perturbation theory. In the case of neutral Higgs boson production $`b\overline{b}\mathrm{\Phi }`$ this has recently been demonstrated, including the NNLO QCD corrections . We are lucky in the case of bottom quarks: the comparison between the actual and the asymptotic form of the exclusive cross section allows us to estimate $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}`$ and therefore the bottom parton factorization scale for the inclusive process. This also tells us how large the ‘large logarithms’, which are resummed using bottom parton densities, actually are.

There are two caveats to be kept in mind, though. First, the inclusive process $`gbtH^{}`$ assumes that the entire cross section comes from a phase space region in which we can neglect the transverse momentum of the bottom jet appearing in the exclusive process $`gg\overline{b}tH^{}`$. This is probably a good approximation, in particular after including detector effects, but one has to be aware of it. Second, naive dimensional analysis suggests $`\mu _{F,b}=m_t+m_H`$, which is often used. This does not have to be correct. The only thing dimensional analysis tells us is $`\mu _{F,b}(m_t+m_H)`$, as long as the production process is dominated by the threshold region. It has been shown that the proportionality factor does not at all have to be unity and that a wrong choice of scale leads to a systematic overestimate of the cross section, as it is obvious from eq.(4.

## III Asymptotic Behavior in the Bottom Quark Virtuality

To make our argument as transparent as possible, we will investigate the relation between the bottom factorization scale and the threshold mass in two steps. The threshold mass we will refer to as $`M`$; for the charged Higgs boson production process this means $`M=m_t+m_H`$. We can generally rewrite the exclusive and the inclusive production processes including one bottom parton as

$$gg\overline{b}X_MbgX_M,$$
(5)
where $`X_M`$ denotes the heavy final state particles. For a typical gluon–induced LHC production process close to threshold we expect the invariant mass of the heavy system and the threshold mass $`M`$ to be similar. In the case of $`gg\overline{b}tH^{}`$ we investigate how close to threshold the production takes place in Fig. 1. The parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ is defined as the difference between the invariant mass of the heavy $`tH^{}`$ system and the threshold mass $`M=m_t+m_H`$. We indeed see that the distributions peak at small values $`\mathrm{\Delta }M/M1/8`$, even though there are sizeable tails towards larger invariant masses.

In the first step of our argument, we investigate the maximum value for the intermediate bottom quark virtuality $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$, up to which the asymptotic form of the exclusive cross section holds

$$Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}=C_QM.$$
(6)
In Section IV, we then estimate how far the asymptotic form in terms of the bottom transverse momentum is valid. From Ref.  we expect a relation $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}M/6`$. If we assume that this reduction will consist of the suppression from the asymptotic behavior in the virtuality and an additional suppression when we move to the asymptotic behavior in the transverse momentum, we obtain

$$\mu _{F,b}p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}=C_pQ_b^{\mathrm{max}}=C_pC_QM$$
(7)
To understand the asymptotic behavior of the hadronic cross section $`\sigma (pp{}_{}{}^{^{^{()}}}\overline{b}X_M)`$ as a function of the bottom quark virtuality, we rewrite the integration over the phase space and the parton momentum fractions . As long as we are interested in the behavior of the cross section for large values of the rapidity we can safely neglect the bottom quark mass:

$$\sigma =\frac{1}{16\pi }\frac{1}{S}_0^{SM^2}𝑑Q_b^2_{Q_b^2+M^2}^S𝑑s_{\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{log}\frac{s}{S}}^{\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{log}\frac{s}{S}}𝑑y_{gg}\frac{1}{s^2}\overline{||^2}$$
(8)
Here $`Q_b`$ is the intermediate bottom quark virtuality, $`y`$ the rapidity, and $`\sqrt{S}`$ and $`\sqrt{s}`$ are the hadronic and partonic collider energies. The factor $`1/s^2`$ in the integrand is obvious from the difference in mass units between the matrix element and the partonic differential cross section $`d\widehat{\sigma }/dQ_b^2`$, as it originally appears in the integral. The parton densities are denoted as $`=P_{i/p}(x_1)P_{j/p}(x_2)`$. At this point we make a few simplifying approximations: since we want to show that the asymptotic behavior in the virtuality is a process-independent phase space effect, we neglect all structures in the matrix element, except for the asymptotic behavior in the virtuality. The asymptotic form of the differential hadronic cross section $`d\sigma /dQ_b1/Q_b`$ translates into $`\overline{||^2}=S^2\sigma _0/Q_b^2`$. The factor $`S^2`$ we introduce to absorb units of energy, it could as well be $`M^4`$. For reasons which will be obvious later, it could not be a partonic variable, since we need to keep track of the powers of the parton momentum fraction. Furthermore, we assume that the steep gluon densities balance each other for the production of heavy states $`x_1=x_2=\sqrt{x}`$ for $`x_1,x_21`$. The approximate hadronic cross section now reads

$`\sigma `$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{2\sigma _0}{16\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{SM^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{dQ_b}{Q_b}}{\displaystyle _{\frac{Q_b^2+M^2}{S}}^1}{\displaystyle \frac{dx}{x^2}}_{gg}(x)\mathrm{log}x`$ (9)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{2\sigma _0_0}{16\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{SM^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{dQ_b}{Q_b}}F(\tau (Q_b^2))`$ (10)
using

$$F(\tau )=_\tau ^1\frac{dx}{x^2}\frac{1}{x^{j2}}\mathrm{log}x=\frac{1}{(1j)^2}\left[1\tau ^{1j}+(1j)\tau ^{1j}\mathrm{log}\tau \right]Q_b\frac{d\sigma }{dQ_b},$$
(11)
with $`x=s/S`$ and $`\tau =(Q_b^2+M^2)/S`$. The function $`F(\tau )`$ is as a correction to the asymptotic behavior of the virtuality distribution $`d\sigma /dQ_b1/Q_b`$. In an intermediate step we have approximated the incoming parton luminosity by a simple power suppression $`=_0/x^{j2}`$. As a general parameterization of the parton densities, this is certainly not a good idea. However, looking at the production of heavy particles at the LHC we probe momentum fractions between $`10^1`$ and few times $`10^3`$. In Fig. 2 we show different parton distributions multiplied by $`x^n`$ for two values of the factorization scale. The ratio is normalized to its value at $`x=0.1`$. Looking at the different values of $`n`$ we see that our argument will at this point become dependent on the parton the incoming bottom parton sees on the other side. On the other hand, we also see that for $`gg`$ and $`gb`$ initial states the approximation $`1/(x_1x_2)^2`$ works very well. From Fig. 2 we obtain $`j=4`$ for gluon or bottom initial states in the definition of $`F(\tau )`$. In Fig. 3 we show the behavior of $`F(\tau )`$ as a function of the bottom quark virtuality, the way it looks for a $`500\mathrm{GeV}`$ charged Higgs boson at the LHC. The case of $`j=2`$ corresponds to constant parton densities $`_0`$.

Let us now turn to a detailed discussion of the function $`F(\tau )`$, shown in Fig. 3. As mentioned above, $`F(\tau )`$ is a correction to the known asymptotic behavior of the differential hadronic cross section with respect to the bottom quark virtuality. As in Ref. , we show the (normalized) curves for $`Q_bd\sigma /dQ_b`$, which we numerically obtain for the exclusive $`\overline{b}tH^{}`$ production process, in Fig. 4. The first thing we notice from the exact results in Fig. 4 is that, as a function of $`Q_b/M`$, the curves for different Higgs boson masses are almost identical. The only major difference arises from the finite bottom mass effects, since their onset does not scale with $`Q_b/M`$, but with $`m_b/Q_b`$. On the other hand, these mass effects are understood and of no relevance to our argument, which is concerned with the upper end of the asymptotic behavior in $`Q_b`$. We roughly indicate this upper end of the plateau with a dotted line, where $`Q_bd\sigma /dQ_b`$ has dropped to half of its plateau value. In the first row in Fig. 4 we observe how the plateau in the virtuality does not at all extend to $`Q_b=M`$. The asymptotic approximation of the virtuality distribution is valid only up to values $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}M/2.5`$. In the second row we see that this picture changes when we ignore the gluon densities, but keep everything else, like in the complete numerical analysis: now the asymptotic behavior extends to $`Q_bM`$. In other words, the short plateau in $`Q_bd\sigma /dQ_b`$ is an effect of the steep gluon density in the proton. In the last row we also show how the approximation of the gluon luminosity $`_{gg}(x_1,x_2)1/(x_1x_2)^2`$, which is a major ingredient we use to derive the approximate form $`F(\tau )`$, works very well for the virtuality distribution.

Since our main interest is the size of the bottom quark virtuality plateau, we need to compare the approximate form of $`F(\tau )`$ in Fig. 3 with the exact distribution $`Q_bd\sigma /dQ_b`$ in the first row of Fig. 4. In all figures we include the line which indicates where $`Q_bd\sigma /dQ_b`$ has decreased to half the plateau value. This is as good a measure for the extension of the plateau as any other. For the discussion of the approximate function $`F(\tau )`$ we prefer a better suited measure: the turning point of $`F(\tau (\mathrm{log}Q_b/M))`$

$$\frac{d^2F(\tau (Q_b^2))}{d(\mathrm{log}Q_b)^2}|_{Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}}=0.$$
(12)
In Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 we see that this definition gives essentially the same $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$ values as the dotted line. The numerical values for $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$ which we compute from the definition of $`F(\tau )`$ are given in Tab. I for different values of $`j`$. The case $`j=2`$ corresponds to the case with constant parton densities. It is in very good agreement with what we see in the second row of Fig. 4. The case $`j=4`$ should give the extension of the plateau for $`gg`$\- and $`qb`$-initiated processes, for example the charged Higgs boson production process. We see that the approximation $`\overline{||^2}=S^2\sigma _0/Q_b^2`$ does not give a perfect prediction of $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$, as it leads to $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}M/1.8`$. For interfering $`s`$ and $`t`$ channel diagrams in the production process $`gg\overline{b}X_M`$, the common denominator in the differential cross section typically becomes $`1/(sQ_b^2)`$, while the numerator is dominated by the heavy mass. In our simple approximation we did not take into account this additional factor $`1/s`$, which increases $`j`$ to 5 and moves the turning point to $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}M/2`$ and therefore much closer to the values seen in Fig. 4.

To summarize this section: we have shown that partonic phase space effects are responsible for the maximum value $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$, up to which the asymptotic behavior of the hadronic cross section with respect to the bottom quark virtuality is valid. Our very simple approximation agrees with the numbers we obtain for the full hadronic process $`gg\overline{b}tH^{}`$ in Fig. 4:

$$Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}=C_QMC_Q|_{\mathrm{approx}}\frac{1}{2}C_Q|_{btH}\frac{1}{2.5}$$
(13)
## IV Asymptotic Behavior in the Bottom Quark Transverse Momentum

From the discussion of the bottom quark virtuality one would expect to be able to follow a similar set of arguments for the bottom quark transverse momentum. Unfortunately, the phase space parameterization reflects the fact that the hadronic cross section factorizes in the virtuality and not in the transverse momentum. Instead, we choose a different path: we know that the asymptotic behavior $`d\sigma /dp_{T,b}1/p_{T,b}`$ has to hold for small transverse momenta. In that regime the longitudinal momentum of the outgoing bottom quark in the center-of-mass system will be much larger than the transverse momentum: $`\rho p_{z,b}/p_{T,b}1`$. On the other hand, we want to push this approximation to its limits, $`\rho 1`$. The general relation between the virtuality and the transverse momentum of the bottom jet for the production of a heavy system $`X_M`$ at threshold is:

$$\frac{Q_b^2}{M^2}=\frac{p_{T,b}\sqrt{s}}{M^2}\left(\sqrt{1+\rho ^2}\rho \right)\frac{p_{T,b}}{M}$$
(14)
In the intermediate step we have assumed that in the limit of large bottom quark virtuality and large transverse momentum the bottom jet has dominantly a transverse momentum direction, i.e. that the bottom jet is central in the detector. We now require that the phase space region which forms the upper end of the plateau in the virtuality ($`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$) is also responsible for the upper end of the transverse momentum plateau ($`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}`$). From the approximate result in eq.(13) we obtain

$$\mu _{F,b}=p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}=C_pQ_b^{\mathrm{max}}=C_pC_QMC_p|_{\mathrm{approx}}=C_Q|_{\mathrm{approx}}=\frac{1}{2}$$
(15)
To understand this effect in more detail, we now keep $`\rho `$ as a free parameter and assume that the heavy system $`X_M`$ be produced at threshold. We find:

$$p_{T,b}=\frac{sM^2}{2\sqrt{s}\sqrt{1+\rho ^2}}$$
(16)
We can solve the equation for $`\sqrt{s}`$ and insert it into eq.(14), which leaves us with:

$$\frac{Q_b^2}{M^2}=\frac{p_{T,b}^2}{M^2}\left(1+\rho ^2\rho \sqrt{1+\rho ^2}\right)\left(1+\sqrt{1+\frac{M^2}{p_{T,b}^2(1+\rho ^2)}}\right)$$
(17)
This function has two limiting cases: for small transverse momentum ($`\rho 1`$), $`p_{T,b}`$ scales with the virtuality $`p_{T,b}Q_b`$. This means that the plateau in the transverse momentum will extend to the same value as the plateau in the virtuality. This observation suggests that (at least for not too large transverse momenta) the phase space region which dominates the high end of the plateau in $`Q_b`$ will also be responsible for the upper end of the plateau in $`p_{T,b}`$. We have confirmed this assumption for charged Higgs boson production explicitly. In contrast, for very large transverse momentum ($`\rho 1`$), a correction to the linear relation between $`p_{T,b}`$ and $`Q_b`$ occurs. This correction pushes $`p_{T,b}`$ to smaller values, and the corrections becomes bigger for small values of $`p_{T,b}/M`$, which is what we expect from the shifted and softened transverse momentum plateau in Fig. 4.

To translate $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$ into $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}`$ we evaluate eq.(17) numerically. The left hand side we substitute by $`C_Q`$, which according to the previous section assumes numerical values of $`1/2`$ to $`1/3`$. Fig. 5 shows the corresponding values of $`C_p=p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}/Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$ for different $`\rho `$ values. Indeed $`C_p=1`$ holds for small transverse momentum $`\rho 5`$. For all other values of $`\rho `$ the transverse momentum is always considerably smaller than the virtuality. In other words: if we want the transverse momentum to be as large as possible for a given virtuality, we would have to make $`\rho `$ large, i.e. make the longitudinal momentum even larger. The limiting factor will be once more the steep gluon luminosity. In the opposite regime $`\rho 1`$, which will be preferred by the gluon density, we find a very substantial reduction factor $`C_p1/2`$.

In the right panel of Fig. 1 we plot the $`\rho `$ distribution for exclusive charged Higgs boson production. It is clearly peaked at small values of $`\rho `$, which means large values of $`p_{T,b}`$. The peak becomes considerably more pronounced if we only allow virtualities above $`M/5`$, which limits the phase space to the transition region in the virtuality plateau. According to Fig. 5, the region $`\rho 1`$ leads to transverse momenta much smaller than the virtuality. Even though the actual distribution in Fig. 1 peaks at $`\rho =0`$ these events will not anymore contribute to the upper end of the plateau in $`p_{T,b}`$; instead the plateau in $`p_{T,b}`$ will be softened. At the opposite end, $`\rho 2`$, we would expect a negligible suppression factor $`C_p`$ and large transverse momenta from virtualities around $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$, but the actual distribution shows how the gluon luminosities cut heavily into this region. What is left is the intermediate region $`\rho =0.5\mathrm{}1.5`$, which interpolates between the extremes and contributes most to the upper end of the plateau in $`p_{T,b}d\sigma /dp_{T,b}`$. Even though the numerical details used in this argument are not process independent, the fact that one has to interpolate between the two extreme regions in phase space is completely general.

This leaves us with two conclusions concerning the connection between the asymptotic regions in the bottom quark virtuality and transverse momentum. First, the plateau will not just translate from $`Q_bd\sigma /dQ_b`$ to $`p_{T,b}d\sigma /dp_{T,b}`$. Instead, it will be softened. Second, we can extract our approximate prediction for $`C_p`$ from Fig. 5 (keeping in mind $`C_Q1/2.5`$) and compare it with what we find in Fig. 4:

$$\mu _{F,b}=p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}=C_pQ_b^{\mathrm{max}}C_p|_{\mathrm{approx}}\frac{1}{1.4}\mathrm{}\frac{1}{2}C_p|_{btH}\frac{1}{2}$$
(18)
Together with the results presented in Section III we now understand that for charged Higgs boson production the plateau in $`p_{T,b}d\sigma /dp_{T,b}`$ does not extend to values $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}M`$. Making use essentially of phase space effects we instead find $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}M/4`$. This result confirms the value $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}M/5`$, which we find directly from the exclusive process $`gg\overline{b}tH^{}`$ , which implies that using the naive bottom quark factorization scale $`\mu _{F,b}=M`$ will overestimate the cross section considerably. On the other hand, higher order QCD corrections  soften the dependence on the factorization scale considerably.

We can also turn this argument around: the bottom parton approach means integrating over the additional bottom quark phase space and resumming the logarithms including the transverse momentum. Going back to eq.(4), we see that the terms which we resum are at maximum $`\alpha _s\mathrm{log}[(p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}/m_b)^2]`$. For a charged Higgs boson of mass $`500\mathrm{GeV}`$ this gives $`6.7\alpha _s`$. For a threshold mass $`M=130\mathrm{GeV}`$ the logarithm only yields moderate $`3.5\alpha _s`$, using $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}=M/5`$.

## V Similar and Not So Similar Processes

### A Neutral Higgs Boson Production

In the previous sections we derived the appropriate bottom parton factorization scale for the associated production of a charged Higgs boson and a top quark. For different reasons this process is particularly well suited for the bottom parton description: there is only one bottom parton, the top–Higgs system is very heavy, it will be produced close to threshold, and (for those reasons) it will be slow-moving and central in the detector. A process which is particularly important for light as well as for heavy supersymmetric Higgs bosons is the production of a neutral scalar in association with two bottom quarks, which at the different level of inclusive versus exclusive description reads :

$$gg\overline{b}b\mathrm{\Phi }bgb\mathrm{\Phi }b\overline{b}\mathrm{\Phi }$$
(19)
A phenomenological interesting aspect is that these kind of channels with at least one tagged bottom jet  can prove an enhanced bottom Yukawa coupling. We know that just like in the charged Higgs boson case, the factorization scale of the bottom parton has to be chosen well below $`m_\mathrm{\Phi }`$ . The first reason is that again a heavy system ($`X_M=b\mathrm{\Phi }`$) is produced close to threshold, Fig. 6. In Fig. 7 we show the plateau in $`Q_bd\sigma /dQ_b`$, similarly to the figures in Ref. , and obtain $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}M/2.5`$. Like for the charged Higgs boson case we see that the curves are nearly degenerate for different Higgs boson masses, i.e.$`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}M`$. For the neutral Higgs bosons an additional curve is included in Fig. 7, assuming a $`130\mathrm{GeV}`$ light scalar MSSM Higgs boson. In this case the plateau is not particularly wide, since the bottom mass effects bend down the curves at fairly large values of $`Q_b/M`$. On the other hand, these effects are understood, so that the altered shape can be treated just like a plateau. Moreover, the dominant effects will arise from the upper end of the curve, where the logarithms are largest.

Comparing Fig. 4 with Fig. 7, we see that the extension of the asymptotic behavior in the bottom quark virtuality at the LHC is just the same for charged Higgs boson production ($`bgtH^{}`$) as for neutral Higgs boson production ($`bgb\mathrm{\Phi }`$), for similar heavy state masses. An aspect we did not discuss in the charged Higgs boson case is that the plateau seems to extend to slightly larger virtualities for smaller threshold masses, in particular for a $`130\mathrm{GeV}`$ neutral Higgs boson. The reason is that, in general, $`X_M`$ will be produced relatively closer to threshold for heavier states, i.e.$`\mathrm{\Delta }M/M`$ becomes smaller, even though Fig. 1 and Fig. 6 show that in absolute numbers $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ becomes slightly larger for heavier states $`X_M`$.

Up to this point we did not have to specify the collider energy in our approximation. Moreover, charged Higgs boson production is only relevant at the LHC. The distributions for neutral Higgs boson production at the Tevatron are given in Fig. 8. While for small Higgs boson masses of $`130\mathrm{GeV}`$ the bottom quark virtuality plateau looks very similar to corresponding curves for the LHC, our picture starts to break down for very large Higgs boson masses. In that case the limited hadronic collider energy does not allow production of heavy states plus a bottom jet with sizeable virtuality/transverse momentum. Of course, the case of a $`500\mathrm{GeV}`$ Higgs boson at the Tevatron is phenomenologically irrelevant. On the other hand, we learn that implicitly we have used another approximation in our discussion of the LHC processes: that the production rate even for large virtuality is limited only by the parton densities and the parton energy, never by the hadronic collider energy. Implicitly we check this requirement in Fig. 4, when we confirm $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}M`$ after neglecting the effect of parton densities.

Last but not least, the question is what will happen for the completely inclusive Higgs boson production ($`b\overline{b}\mathrm{\Phi }`$)? From Ref.  we know that the argument for the plateau in $`Q_bd\sigma /dQ_b`$ works just the same way as before, except that we now use the semi-exclusive process $`bgb\mathrm{\Phi }`$ to compute $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$. Using the approximation described in Section III we understand what happens: the mass of the heavy system is still $`M=m_\mathrm{\Phi }`$, but the gluon which splits into a bottom quark pair now sees a bottom parton on the other side instead of the gluon in the completely exclusive process. In Fig. 2 we see that the approximations $`_{bg}1/(x_1x_2)^2`$ and $`x_1x_2`$ still work fine. In a way this is a consistency check, of course. A significant change in the behavior of the bottom partons between the first bottom jet and the second bottom jet to be integrated over in the process $`ggb\overline{b}\mathrm{\Phi }`$ would pose a serious problem for factorization in general. This result is in very good agreement with the results of the NNLO QCD calculation for this process: the small bottom quark factorization scale indeed yields perturbative corrections which are well under control .

The second step is again the transition from the plateau in virtuality to that in transverse momentum. Not surprisingly, from the exclusive process we numerically find the same behavior as for the charged Higgs boson, Fig. 4. Our argument in Section IV also works just the same way for neutral Higgs bosons. From the exclusive process we numerically find $`\mu _{F,b}M/5`$, which we can understand in complete analogy to the charged Higgs boson case in the previous sections.

### B Single Top Quark Production

In contrast to the Higgs boson production mechanisms, the bottom parton picture in single top quark production

$$ug\overline{b}td(ubtd)\overline{d}g\overline{b}t\overline{u}(\overline{d}bt\overline{u})$$
(20)
has never posed a problem. The difference between the two above processes is that the first one will involve valence quarks at the LHC, while the second one will not. Looking back, Fig. 2 shows that these channels should look slightly different, if our argument in Section III is correct.

In the left column in Fig 7 we see how the single top quark case differs from the Higgs boson production. First of all, the plateau in the virtuality extends considerably further, typically to $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}M/1.5`$. This is in agreement with the less steep parton densities for the quarks, which the splitting gluon sees. If we have a closer look, we even see that the plateau extends further in the case of an incoming valence quark than for a sea quark, which is in agreement with the approximate parton densities, Fig. 2.

However, our approximation has to be looked at with some care, since now we cannot assume $`x_1x_2`$ anymore. Furthermore, in Fig. 6 we see that the single top quark production does not at all happen close to threshold. It peaks around $`\mathrm{\Delta }Mm_W`$, which reflects the fact that one could integrate over the phase space of the outgoing jet and regard the single top quark process as $`bW`$ scattering. This gives the outgoing jet a transverse momentum kick of the order of the $`W`$ boson mass. The fact that the invariant mass of the heavy system $`X_M=tj`$, as it appears in eq.(10), is easily twice the threshold mass, again contributes to the larger values of $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$. Finally, as discussed in the context of neutral Higgs bosons, production away from threshold lifts the degeneracy of different values of $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}/M`$, pushing the lighter states to higher values of $`Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}`$.

We will not discuss the transition from the bottom quark virtuality to the transverse momentum in any detail. From Fig. 7 we see that the plateau is softened and $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}Q_b^{\mathrm{max}}/2`$, as in all other processes discussed before: the interpolation argument presented in Section IV describes the single top quark production perfectly well. This part of our argument indeed holds independently for all processes considered in this paper.

Recently, a similar issue of bottom partons was discussed  in the framework of single top quark production at a linear collider $`e\gamma \overline{\nu }t\overline{b}`$. The authors find sizeable differences between the finite $`m_b`$ prediction and the (massless) structure function approach, predominantly close to threshold $`\sqrt{s}m_t+m_b+10\mathrm{GeV}`$. These differences can in part be traced back to phase space effects. From Fig. 1 and Fig. 6 we see that this region of phase space contributes little to the Higgs boson sample at the LHC, after we convolute the partonic cross section with the gluon densities, integrating over the entire partonic energy range. It will have even less impact on the total rate once a minimum transverse momentum of the Higgs boson decay products is required. While for a linear collider the bottom quark mass is an important source of theoretical uncertainty and the collinear logarithms (multiplied with $`\alpha 1/137`$) are under control, the dominant problem at hadron colliders is the size of the logarithms (multiplied with $`\alpha _s`$), which we link to the transverse momentum spectrum in the exclusive processes.

## VI Conclusions

Starting from charged Higgs boson production in association with a top quark, we have investigated processes which can be described using bottom partons. From the kinematics of the exclusive processes, we numerically find that the factorization scale of the bottom parton has to be smaller than the threshold mass or the hard scale in the process: $`\mu _{F,b}M/5`$. In two steps we first investigate the validity of the asymptotic approximation in the bottom quark virtuality and then in the transverse momentum. The upper limit $`p_{T,b}^{\mathrm{max}}`$, for which the exclusive cross section is dominated by collinear bottom quarks and large logarithms $`\mathrm{log}(p_{T,b}^2/m_b^2)`$, defines the appropriate value for the factorization scale of the bottom parton in the inclusive process. We derive the observed dramatic decrease in the factorization scale as compared to the hard scale $`M`$ in a process-independent approach, using only properties of the phase space and of the parton densities. In this simple picture we indeed find $`\mu _{F,b}M/4`$.

This observation resolves the puzzle of the discrepancy between inclusive and exclusive rates, as it has been present in the literature. Using an appropriate scale, the difference for example for the process $`b\overline{b}\mathrm{\Phi }`$  is not huge and well understood. Moreover, higher order calculations have been pointing to small bottom factorization scales ; we understand how this is caused by the partonic phase space without relying on numerical arguments based on higher order corrections.

Turning around the argument, we can specify how large the logarithms actually are, which are resummed in the bottom parton picture. Again, they are smaller than the naive guess $`\mathrm{log}(M^2/m_b^2)`$ would indicate. In particular, for a light neutral Higgs boson one can debate using the (resummed) bottom parton cross section, or just integrating over the exclusive cross section . For heavier neutral or charged Higgs bosons the logarithms are certainly large enough to require a resummation.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank Michael Krämer for fruitful discussions. Moreover, we would like to thank Thomas Gehrmann, Dave Rainwater and Robert Harlander for very helpful comments and the careful reading of the manuscript. T.P. would like to thank the Physics Department of the University of Edinburgh, where part of this work was completed, for their hospitality. E.B. was partly supported by the INTAS 00-0679, CERN-INTAS 99-377, and Universities of Russia UR.02.03.002 grants


text:
# Extragalactic Globular Clusters in the Near Infrared: III. NGC 5846 and NGC 7192 Based on observations at the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory, Chile (Program 63.N-0287) Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute. STScI is operated by the association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under the NASA contract NAS 5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

As shown by many studies during the last decade (Zepf & Ashman 1993, Ashman & Zepf 1998, Kundu & Whitmore 2001a, b, Larsen et al. 2001, Kissler-Patig et al. 2002) globular cluster systems are a very powerful tool in galaxy formation and evolution studies. Although there is a wide agreement about the existence of sub-populations in cluster systems regarding their metallicity and their age, the discussion about the origin of those populations is still ongoing. Starting with Peebles & Dicke (1968) who assumed globular clusters to be the first objects formed in the early universe, the number of possible formation scenarios increased drastically since then. One of the main issues is to explain the multi-modality found in colour-colour diagrams of globular cluster systems. In general it is agreed that different globular cluster populations are produced during strong star formation events, but the nature of these events remains under debate. Besides the merger scenario, favoured by Ashman & Zepf (1993) (see also Ashman & Zepf (1992), Whitmore et al. 1993; Whitmore & Schweizer 1995; Schweizer et al. 1996; Kissler-Patig 2000), there is a number of alternatives, i.e. the accretion scenario (Côté et al. (1998); Côté et al. (2002); Hilker et al. (1999)) or the monolithic collapse (Forbes et al. 1997a , Kissler-Patig et al. (1998), and references therein). From the photometric point of view it has been shown that the multi-modality of the colour distribution is a common feature of globular cluster systems (Gebhardt & Kissler-Patig (1999)). In particular, the existence of a blue, old and metal-poor cluster population (Ashman & Bird (1993); Burgarella et al. (2001)) is a general feature. Regarding the red sub-population the almost only consensus which has been reached so far, is about the large varieties between different cluster systems. This includes the possible existence of sub-populations within the red population which is interpreted as a sign of different star formation events in later stages of the galaxy evolution.

The main problem in specifying and dating different star formation events arises from the age-metallicity degeneracy of the most commonly used optical colours. So far the bulk of high-quality photometric investigations have been performed using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the optical wavelength regime (Forbes et al. (1998); Kundu & Whitmore (1998); Gebhardt & Kissler-Patig (1999); Larsen et al. (2001)). It has been shown (Minniti et al. (1996); Kissler-Patig (2000); Kissler-Patig et al. (2002) (hereafter cited as Paper I); Puzia et al. (2002) (hereafter Paper II)) that combining optical and near-infrared data is a more promising method to separate age and metallicity effects and to access the relative ages of the globular cluster populations. The method relies on a sampling effect, where the V-band is dominated by stars near the turn-off (TO) region, whereas the main contribution to the K-band is from giant branch stars (Yi et al. (2001)). Whereas the TO is dominated by age effects, the giant branch shows a high sensitivity to metallicity (Saviane et al. (2000)). This results in a similar dependence of $`(VI)`$ and $`(VK)`$ on the age of the clusters, but a higher sensitivity of $`(VK)`$ to the metallicity.

In the previous two papers of this series (Papers I and II), a systematic survey of globular cluster systems of E and S0 galaxies in the combined optical and near-infrared wavelength range (using the $`V`$, $`I`$, and $`K_\mathrm{s}`$ bands) has been started. In Paper I, we compared the globular cluster systems of two ellipticals in the Virgo cluster, namely the giant central galaxy M87 and an intermediate-luminosity galaxy NGC 4478. We found that in those cases, the $`(VK)`$ colour distribution yielded roughly consistent conclusions relative to those derived from the $`(VI)`$ colours measured by HST. In Paper II however, the $`(VK)`$ colours of globular clusters in NGC 4365 led us to postulate the existence of a significant population of intermediate-age ($``$ 2-6 Gyr old), metal-rich globular clusters, which was not revealed by the $`(VI)`$ colours. This important result has recently been confirmed by deep spectroscopy (Larsen et al. 2003), adding credibility to the results derived from our optical + near-infrared imaging program.

One of the aims of this series is to study the the globular cluster systems of galaxies in different environments, e.g. giant ellipticals in centres of clusters as well as rather isolated and less luminous galaxies. The present work will focus on NGC 5846, a giant E0 galaxy in the centre of the Virgo-Libra Cloud, and on NGC 7192, an isolated elliptical with only one companion. Basic informations on both galaxies are provided in Table 1.

Both systems have already been studied in the optical (Forbes et al. 1997b ; Gebhardt & Kissler-Patig (1999)), and show a very broad ($`VI`$) colour distribution. This work aims at the detection of different globular cluster sub-populations, the determination of their age structure and a first comparison of various globular cluster systems. The present paper is organised as follows. In §2 the observations and the data reduction procedures are described. Chapter 3 contains the main results of the observations and §4 describes our approach towards quantifying the age structure in globular cluster systems and the results for both systems. In chapter 5 we will give an outlook on the upcoming work.

## 2 Observations and Data Reduction

### 2.1 VLT/ISAAC Near–Infrared Data

The $`K_\mathrm{s}`$ band exposures for both galaxies have been taken in service mode (ESO program 63.N–0287) with the Near-Infrared Spectrometer And Array Camera (ISAAC) attached to the Unit Telescope 1 (Antu) of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The field-of-view of ISAAC’s Rockwell infrared array is 2.5′$`\times `$ 2.5′, with a pixel scale of 0.147″/pixel. All data were obtained in April and June 1999 in different nights under varying photometric and seeing conditions. Standard star observations revealed that the conditions were not photometric during all nights and an adjustment (described below) was necessary to align all nights onto a photometric system. As in Papers I and II we will always refer to the $`K_s`$ filter as $`K`$.

The NGC 5846 data were obtained during the nights of April 6th, 8th, and 9th 1999 while the NGC 7192 data were taken during the nights of June 1st, 2nd, 21st, and 22nd. The observing strategy for NGC 5846 data was the following: 10$`\times `$10sec object + 5x(2x10sec) sky + 10x10sec object. The one for NGC 7192: 10$`\times `$10sec object + 2x(6x10sec) sky + 10x10sec object. The monitoring of the seeing, magnitude variations, sky level and geometric correction was done by measuring the parameters of four isolated stars in each single frame for both galaxies. A detailed description of the sky subtraction and combination procedure of the $`K`$ band data is given in Puzia et al. (2002). The FWHM of the stellar PSF in the final $`K`$-band image is $``$0.4″ for NGC 5846 and $``$0.5″ for NGC 7192. The total exposure times for NGC 5846 and NGC 7192 are 10000 sec, and 12000 sec, respectively.

#### 2.1.1 Photometry

The photometric calibration of the NGC 5846 and NGC 7192 data set was based on the photometry of 3 and 4 near-IR standard stars, respectively (Persson et al. (1998)).

Measuring the instrumental magnitudes in an aperture of 6 pixel diameter and applying the same analysis as described in Puzia et al. (2002), the following calibration relations for the photometric nights have been derived

$`K_{5846}`$ $`=`$ $`k_{\mathrm{inst}}+23.81(\pm 0.018)0.05(\pm 0.009)\chi `$ (1)
$`K_{7192}`$ $`=`$ $`k_{\mathrm{inst}}+23.83(\pm 0.010)0.05(\pm 0.007)\chi `$ (2)
where $`K_{\mathrm{galaxy}}`$ is the calibrated magnitude, $`k_{\mathrm{inst}}`$ is the instrumental magnitude, and $`\chi `$ the effective airmass ($`=`$ 1.23 for NGC 5846 and 1.34 for NGC 7192). The error of the zero points (second term in eq.(1) and (2)) includes photometric errors of each single standard star measurement and the errors of the aperture correction analysis. The error of the airmass term is an estimate from the variations in airmass of all single exposures.

The zero point shifts of the non-photometric nights to photometric conditions has been derived by tracing the magnitudes of four isolated stars over all nights. The final photometry was performed on the overall combined image. For NGC 7192 it was first done on two combined images separately. One for the photometric nights (June 1st and 2nd), and one for the non-photometric nights (June 21st and 22nd). The magnitudes of both images have been averaged after a zero point correction of the latter. The true photometric uncertainty, measured by the scatter of the single measurements is of the order of $``$0.04 mag, mainly due to the strongly varying sky background.

Finally, all magnitudes were corrected for Galactic foreground reddening using the reddening values of Table 1 and the extinction curves of Cardelli et al. (1989). The corrections for NGC 5846 and NGC 7192 are $`A_K=0.020`$ mag and $`A_K=0.012`$ mag.

### 2.2 HST/WFPC2 Optical Data

The HST data were taken from the public HST archive. NGC 5846 was observed with HST + WFPC2 under program GO.5920. The total exposure times of the combined images are 6600 sec in F555W, and 6900 sec in F814W. NGC 7192 has been imaged with WFPC2 under program GO.5943 in F555W and F814W filters with 1300 sec and 1000 sec of total exposure time, respectively. The HST images were reduced and calibrated following the procedure as described in Puzia et al. (1999, 2002). All magnitudes were measured with the SExtractor tool using a 8 and 4-pixel-diameter aperture for the PC and WF chip and corrected with respect to the Holtzman 0.5$`\mathrm{}`$ standard aperture (Holtzman et al. (1995)). Instrumental magnitudes were then transformed to the Johnson $`V`$ and $`I`$ magnitudes according to the prescription given by Holtzman et al. (1995). All magnitudes were reddening corrected using the following values: $`A_V=0.182`$ and $`A_I=0.107`$ for NGC 5846 and $`A_V=0.113`$ and $`A_I=0.066`$ for NGC 7192 (see $`E_{BV}`$ in Table 1).

### 2.3 Selection criteria

After combining the optical and near-infrared data using the GEOMAP task within IRAF, the globular cluster sample includes 184 and 61 objects for NGC 5846 and NGC 7192, respectively. Figure 1 shows the field of view for both galaxies and the spatial distribution of the cluster candidates. In order to limit the contamination of the sample by background galaxies or foreground stars and to set a limit onto the photometric error, general selection criteria have been applied. In our discussion only objects with an photometric error $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)`$ 0.1 mag and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VK)`$ 0.1 mag and a FWHM of the PSF below 0.25$`\mathrm{}`$ in the V and I-band are considered.

## 3 Colour-colour diagrams for NGC 5846 and NGC 7192

Colour-colour diagrams together with various SSP models (e.g. in this paper by Bruzual & Charlot 2000) are the basis for age and metallicity estimates. Different models, at identical colors, can show differences in absolute age of about 3 Gyr. Thus, the SSP approach can only lead to approximate absolute ages for the sub-populations. However, relative ages can be estimated accurately enough to separate sub-populations built up during major star formation events.

As shown in Puzia et al.(2002), the various models differ mainly in the metal-rich range (approx. \[Fe/H\]$`>0.8`$). A detailed comparison between the different models in an absolute sense can be found in Maraston et al. (2001a). The metal-rich regime, however, is exactly the one we intend to probe, given that the intermediate-age populations are expected to be enriched in metals.

As opposed to the situation for absolute ages, the relative age predictions for given colors are relatively similar from model to model. Since we focus on the relative age dating of globular cluster systems the choice of a specific model is not crucial and we use the model of Bruzual & Charlot (2000) throughout the following analysis.

As we will show in the following two subsections the results of the KMM test (McLachlan & Basford (1988), updated version 2001) and the derived metallicities are found to differ significantly from expected values and even seem to be in contradiction to what visual inspection of the colour-colour diagrams tells us. Considering the relatively small sample size, the photometric errors in $`(VK)`$ and the limited depth of the observations (shifting the peak position toward red colors) the results of the KMM test, as described by McLachlan & Basford (1988), have to be discussed with much caution. Since this work concentrates on relative ages at this stage we will only mention the results of the KMM and leave the discussion for later.

### 3.1 NGC 5846

The colour-magnitude diagram (hereafter CMD) and the colour-colour diagrams for NGC 5846 are given in Figures 3 and 3. The histogram in the upper part of the CMD shows the complete set of clusters as a solid histogram whereas the selected objects, following the selection criteria given in Section 2.3, are shown by the hatched histogram. As expected the selection criteria affect mostly the objects in the very red colour range, since the photometric errors are larger and background galaxies possibly contaminate the sample.

The CMD (Fig. 3) reveals evidence for the a bimodal colour distribution. The KMM test as described by Ashman et al. (1994) confirms this result with a confidence level of $``$90$`\%`$ for a bimodal colour distribution. We obtain peak positions of $`(VK)_{\mathrm{blue}}`$ = 2.57$`\pm `$0.06 and $`(VK)_{\mathrm{red}}`$ = 3.18$`\pm `$0.06 for both colour populations with an estimate of correct allocation value (confidence level) of 0.79 and 0.94 for the blue and the red peak, respectively. Hereby about 30$`\%`$ of the globular clusters were assigned to the blue population and 70$`\%`$ to the red. Using the calibration by Kissler-Patig (Paper I) for old populations, this corresponds to a metallicity of \[Fe/H\]=$`0.54\pm 0.6`$ dex and $`0.27\pm 0.4`$ dex for the metal-poor and the metal-rich populations, respectively.

Note that our completeness limit is dominated by the $`K`$-band, and that we are biased in favour of red clusters (Paper II; see Fig. 3). Thus, both the ratio of the numbers of red to blue clusters and the metallicity of the blue peak are overestimates.

It is interesting to mention that no multi-modality could be found in the $`VI`$ colour distribution. This is similar to the situation in NGC 4365 where the intermediate-age population, when projected on the $`VI`$ axis, fills the gap between the two old (metal-rich and metal-poor) sub-populations. When forced to bimodality, the $`(VI)`$ peak positions determined by the KMM test are $`(VI)_{\mathrm{blue}}=1.11`$ and $`(VI)_{\mathrm{red}}=1.13\pm 0.02`$. This is in agreement with the results by Gebhardt & Kissler-Patig (1999).

### 3.2 NGC 7192

Referring to the CMD and the colour-colour diagram for NGC 7192 given in Figure 5 and Figure 5, the difference to the globular cluster system of NGC 5846 can be seen: while NGC 5846 exhibits a strong spread perpendicular to the isochrones, NGC 7192 is more homogeneously populated along the isochrone.

The small number of objects do not allow one to draw strong conclusions from the KMM test in terms of the existence of colour bimodality. The colour-colour plot for NGC 7192 does suggest the existence of two populations of different metallicity (i.e., a ‘metal-poor’ population with $`(VI)<1.1`$ and $`(VK)<2.8`$ and a ‘metal-rich’ population with $`(VI)>1.0`$ and $`(VK)>2.8`$) but the small number statistics do not allow one to support this firmly statistically.

Formally, the colour for the two peaks of the distribution projected on the $`VK`$ axis is returned by KMM to be $`(VK)`$= 2.83 and 2.89 (with 90% of the objects assigned to the first peak), if a bimodal distribution is assumed. Since the difference in colour between the two peaks is well below the photometric error it seems far-fetched to assume the existence of two distinct globular cluster sub-populations.

Therefore we assume that the NGC 7192 globular cluster system consists only of one dominant population. Following the calibration values by Kissler-Patig (Paper I) we derive a peak metallicity of \[Fe/H\]=$`0.57\pm 0.37`$.

## 4 Determining the age structure from colour-colour diagrams

### 4.1 Colour distributions

The basic idea in using optical and near-infrared photometry in globular cluster studies is to lift the age – metallicity degeneracy and to resolve possible age sub-populations of globular clusters. The minor drawback with respect to using optical colors alone is an increased photometric error mainly caused by the infrared observations, i.e., in the K-band. This, however, is more than compensated for by the larger diagnostic power of the optical – near-infrared combination (see Papers I and II). A separation in the colour-colour plot of sub-populations with different metallicities becomes easier, and a separation in age at a given metallicity becomes feasible.

We investigate below what the diagnostic power of the method is in terms of separating sub-populations of different ages. To do so, we investigated artificial colour-colour distributions of composite populations based on the Bruzual & Charlot (2000) isochrones. These artificial systems were built as follows:

$``$ In a first step we create an artificial $`VK`$ distribution of metal-rich globular clusters. We populate the red $`(VK)`$ colour range ($`2.7(VK)3.8`$), assuming that it is occupied by “old” and “intermediate” age objects. We do not consider bluer clusters ($`2.0(VK)2.7`$), assuming that these are only “old” objects.

For now, we assume cases similar to NGC 5846 (see Figure 3) in terms of sample size and photometric errors. For a first exemplary case, we assume 50$`\%`$ of the red population to be 15 Gyr old and 50$`\%`$ to be 3 Gyr old. These numbers are not assumed to reflect the ‘true’ situation, but rather serve to demonstrate the method at this point. We will probe models with different ratios in the future (see Section 5.2). Further, it will become clear below that we are not directly comparing observed and simulated colour-colour diagrams but rather their cumulative age distributions, i.e., properties of the distributions still need to be “calibrated”.

The final modeled systems contain 43 old, blue objects (not considered further) and 120 red objects homogeneously distributed within the $`VK`$ range 111We experimented also with Gaussian distributions within this colour range, but the final results of the experiment did not differ significantly and we have no better physical justification for a gaussian than for a homogeneous colour distribution. The red population was divided into an old (15 Gyr) and young (3 Gyr) population with 60 objects each.

$``$ In a second step we attach to each $`VK`$ data point a ($`1\sigma `$) error drawn randomly from our observed list of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VK)`$ errors for NGC 5846, and then smear in a Monte-Carlo approach each $`VK`$ point with up to $`\pm 3`$ times its associated error (i.e. allowing up to $`3\sigma `$ errors in very rare cases). These new $`VK`$ values are stored with their 1 $`\sigma `$ error and used for the further process.

$``$ The third step consists of associating a $`VI`$ colour to each new $`VK`$ colour. To do this, we perform a least-square fit to the SSP model isochrones (in this case from Bruzual & Charlot 2000) by a logarithmic function ($`(VI)`$=A$``$log$`(VK)`$+B). The particular fit parameters A and B are given in Table 2. Figure 6 shows the isochrones as given by Bruzual (2000) and our fits to the isochrones (solid lines).

The fits are then used to compute for each $`VK`$ point the corresponding $`VI`$ point, once the age was chosen. In our case, we used the 15 Gyr fit for the 60 old artificial clusters, and the 3 Gyr fit for the other 60 (young) artificial clusters.

$``$ Finally, in the fourth step we associate a measurement error $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)`$ to each $`(VI)`$ data point in a similar way as for $`(VK)`$. We now have a set of 120 objects (60 old, 60 young) with associated $`(VK)`$ and $`(VI)`$ colors and errors.

As an example of such artificial colour-colour distributions, we show in Figure 7 the modeled colour-colour diagram of a purely 15 Gyr old population and a composite old (15 Gyr) and young (3 Gyr) clusters as well as the resulting age distribution (lower panels). This distributions should be compared to the observed data for NGC 5846 in Fig. 3.

### 4.2 Cumulative age structure

The separation of the isochrones in Fig. 6 and the difference between the distributions in Fig. 7 (upper panels) motivated us to use the optical-near infrared photometry in order to try to separate globular cluster populations of different ages. This appears from the above plots to be at least possible to age differences of 10 Gyr or more (with respect to 15 Gyr for the oldest clusters). Therefore we decided to take the analysis one step further and to make a first attempt towards determining the age structure of the globular cluster systems.

We first attempted to compare directly the observed and the artificial colour-colour distributions, but this turned out to be too complicated. Two dimensional statistical tests are required in that case and the typical number of data points is not leading to any statistically significant results. We experimented with 2-dimensional f-test, 2-dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, but in order to constrain the tests somewhat, one needs to put rather artificial constraints and the physical meaning of the final results is dubious.

We therefore decided to focus on 1-dimensional representations of the age structure. The dimension was chosen to maximize the age gradient along it, i.e., “perpendicular” to the isochrones.

Briefly, we associate to every cluster in our observed or artificial distribution an “age greater than X” when it lies above the isochrone of that age X in the colour-colour diagram. We start with the youngest isochrone (0 or 3 Gyr, see below) for which most cluster will lie above, and then move up isochrone by isochrone (in the steps 1,2,3,5,7,10,13,15 Gyr). Hereby the notation “0 Gyr” refers to objects below the 1 Gyr isochrone. The result is an inverted cumulative distributions as shown in Fig. 8 for artificial distributions and in Fig. 9 for the observed distributions of all our galaxies analyzed so far. The cumulative age distribution can be represented in absolute numbers (left panel) or normalized to the total number of objects (at an arbitrary bin, right panel).

#### 4.2.1 Artificial data sets

As described above, the first set of simulations was done for combinations of a 15 Gyr old sub-population and an equal number of intermediate-age objects (1,2,3,5,7,10 Gyr). The results are shown in Figure 8. Each curve shows the mean age structure as evaluated from 1000 models for that given age composition.

The realistic photometric errors create a spread in the colour-colour diagram such that even a pure 15 Gyr system does not show 100% of the clusters to be older than 15 Gyr. Instead, the spread in the $`(VI)`$ vs. $`(VK)`$ diagram leads to a gentle fall-off with isochrone age.

However, this fall-off clearly changes when a second, younger sub-population gets mixed in. By the time one mixes a 1,2,3 Gyr population in the system, the fall-off becomes very steep around 2,3,4 Gyr, and the curves cross the 50% level well before the 10 Gyr mark.

#### 4.2.2 Observed data sets

The result for the artificial distributions can be compared with the observed age distributions of the globular cluster systems (see Figure 9) in galaxies analyzed so far (M 87, NGC 4478, NGC 4365, NGC 3115, NGC 5846 and NGC 7192).

Taking first the observed data alone, we notice a clear similarity between NGC 5846 and NGC 4365, as opposed to the 4 other systems (see right panel of Fig. 9. Both galaxies fall-off steeply at early isochrone age and cross the 50% line well before 10 Gyr.

When compared to the results of artificial distributions, this leads immediately to the interpretation that both must host a significant fraction of intermediate-age clusters within their red sub-population. For NGC 4365, this was suspected already in Paper II and has since then been confirmed spectroscopically (Larsen et al. 2002).

In contrast, the age distribution of NGC 7192, NGC 3115, NGC 4478 and M 87 seems to be more consistent with what we would expect for a single age and old ($``$10 Gyr) population.

### 4.3 Contamination of background objects

Contamination of background objects is a potential problem in our analysis and we briefly investigate its impact below.

As above for the artificial distributions, we adopt a situation similar to the observations of NGC 5846. We used the Hubble Deep Field South (available at: www.stecf.org/hstprogrammes/ISAAC), which presents two advantages: it covers exactly the same (WFPC2) field of view as our observation, and it has a deep enough $`K`$-band observation to match our ISAAC observations of the globular cluster systems ($`K<21.5`$ mag). The HDF-S sample was further selected in colours as for our samples. However, we could not apply a FWHM selection (having only the list of objects) so that the contamination is expected to be an overestimate. Even in that case, however, we show below that the effect is negligible for cases such as NGC 5846.

Figure 10 shows the colour-colour diagram of the HDF-S. Depending on magnitude selection, we have between 25 and 40 background objects in our colour selection box. The resulting cumulative age distribution for the HDF-S sample is shown in Figure 11 and assigns about 50$`\%`$ of the objects to a population younger than 3 Gyr. Further, from the colour-colour plots, it becomes clear that the majority of these objects actually lie below the 2 Gyr line, being bluer in $`(VK)`$ and $`(VI)`$ than the intermediate-age, metal-rich globular clusters in NGC 5846. It is most probably dominated by a star-forming galaxy population that would be rejected by our FWHM criteria.

The effect of contamination on NGC 5846 is shown in Figure 12. There, we plot the uncorrected (absolute and relative) age distributions, as well as the ones corrected for background contamination using the HDF-S source counts. Clearly, the effect is marginal. The contaminating objects tend to drag the age distribution towards younger ages, mimicking a slightly younger sub-population, e.g. the intersection with the 50$`\%`$-level occurs at a larger age. Thus, “old” distribution such as for M 87, NGC 3115 etc would appear even older when corrected for contamination. In the cases of NGC 4365 and NGC 5846 (large numbers of clusters) the effect of this (overestimated) contamination is small and does not influence the conclusion that these systems host a significant intermediate-age population.

## 5 Conclusions and future work

### 5.1 Conclusions

In this paper, we presented results of our optical – near-infrared study of the globular cluster systems of NGC 5846 and NGC 7192. While the latter does not show any significant anomaly, the former shows a case very similar to that of NGC 4365 (see Paper II) with good evidence for a significant metal-rich, intermediate-age population in addition to an old, metal-rich one.

We developed a new method to quantify the age structure of the globular cluster systems studied so far, based on a comparison of the cumulative age distributions of the observed and modeled optical – near-infrared colour-colour diagrams. This method appears powerful enough to detect intermediate-age sub-population within globular cluster systems.

Our first conclusions for the galaxies studied so far are that both NGC 4365 and NGC 5846 have a cumulative age distribution of the metal-rich globular clusters that is different from those of the 4 other galaxies (NGC 3115, NGC 4478, NGC 7192 and M 87). The former are better modeled by by a composite metal-rich population including an old (15 Gyr) as well as a significant young (1-5 Gyr) population. The others, in contrast, are very similar to the model for pure old populations and are thus best explained by being dominated by old objects.

NGC 7192 suffers from small number statistics, but the current dataset is, with respect to the colour-colour diagram and the age structure, more consistent with only one sub-population. Compared to the globular cluster systems investigated so far, NGC 7192 most closely resembles NGC 3115.

For M 87 and NGC 4478 the results given in Paper I were not fully conclusive. NGC 4478 also suffers from small number statistics. M 87 appears now more clearly dominated by two sub-populations differing in metallicity, but with a metal-rich population dominated by old objects (see also Jordán et al. 2002).

We need to emphasize again that the method cannot, currently, produce reliable absolute numbers, neither in terms of ages, nor in terms of ratios between the different populations. The results in this paper should therefore be considered as qualitative for now, and will be better quantified in the future.

### 5.2 Future work on age dating

The upcoming papers will analyze the remaining galaxies in our dataset (in total 11 galaxies). This will allow us to discuss the results in the light of galaxy properties. In particular, we will look at trends with galaxy size and environment. The local density (Tully (1988)) covered by our galaxy sample spans from 0.08 Mpc-3 (NGC 3115) to 4.17 Mpc-3 (M87) and environmental effects appear to be an important ingredient to galaxy formation and evolution.

On the modeling side, our goal is to improve the quantitative information of our method. We are developing a $`\chi ^2`$ test to find the best solution in the two parameter space of the models: ratio old/young and age of the young population, which are slightly degenerate. We also plan, with the help of spectroscopy and wide field photometry, to be able to better calibrate the models in terms of absolute age.

Also, we are exploring the dependence of the results on a particular SSP model and we will repeat the determination of the age structure using SSP models by Maraston (2000) and Vazdekis (1999). Further, we will investigate in more detail the effect of background contamination. This latter aspects will be the subject of a separate paper.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors would like to thank the ESO user support group and the ESO science operations for having carried out the program in service mode. We are also grateful to Stephane Charlot for providing his population synthesis models prior to publication. M. Hilker acknowledges support through Proyecto Fondecyt 3980032. THP gratefully acknowledges the support by the German *Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG* project number Be 1091/10–2. DM is supported by FONDAP 15010003 Center for Astrophysics.


text:
# NLO CALCULATIONS OF THE EXCLUSIVE PROCESSES IN PQCD

## 1 Motivation

In testing various aspects of QCD the hadronic exclusive processes (EP) at large momentum transfer in which the total number of particles (partons) in the initial and final states is $`N6`$ are becoming increasingly important.

Leading order (LO) predictions have been obtained for many EP processes. Owing to the fact that the LO predictions in perturbative QCD (pQCD) do not have much predictive power, the inclusion of higher-order corrections is essential because they have a stabilizing effect, reducing the dependence of the LO predictions on the renormalization and factorization scales and the renormalization scheme. However, only a few EP have been analyzed at the next-to-leading order (NLO).

Obtaining radiative corrections in pQCD requires the evaluation of one-loop Feynman integrals with massless propagators (quarks masses can be neglected in high-energy processes). These integrals contain IR divergences (both soft and collinear) and need to be regularized. The most suitable regularization method for pQCD calculations is dimensional regularization.

As it is well known, in calculating Feynman diagrams mainly three difficulties arise: reduction of tensor integrals to scalar integrals, reduction of scalar integrals to a set of basic scalar integrals and the evaluation of the basic scalar integrals.

Considerable progress has recently been made in developing efficient approaches for calculating one$``$loop Feynman integrals with a large number of external lines. As far as the calculation of one-loop $`N`$-point massless integrals is concerned, the most complete and systematic method has been developed by Binoth at al $`^\mathrm{?}`$. It does not, however, apply to all cases of practical interest. Namely, being obtained for the non-exceptional external momenta it cannot be applied to the integrals in which the set of external momenta contains subsets comprised of two or three collinear on-shell momenta. Integrals of this type arise when performing the leading-twist NLO analysis of hadronic EP at large momentum transfer in pQCD.

With no restrictions regarding the external kinematics, in this paper we describe an efficient, systematic and completely general method for reducing an arbitrary one$``$loop $`N`$point massless integral to a set of basic integrals.

## 2 Reduction of tensor integrals

In order to obtain one$``$loop radiative corrections to physical processes in massless gauge theory, the integrals of the following type are required:

$$I_{\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _P}^N(D;\{\nu _i\})=(\mu ^2)^{2D/2}\frac{\mathrm{d}^Dl}{(2\pi )^D}\frac{l_{\mu _1}\mathrm{}l_{\mu _P}}{A_1^{\nu _1}A_2^{\nu _2}\mathrm{}A_N^{\nu _N}},A_i=(l+r_i)^2+\mathrm{i}ϵ.$$
(1)
This is a rank $`P`$ tensor one-loop N-point Feynman integral with massless internal lines in $`D`$ dimensions, where $`l`$ is the loop momentum, $`\mu `$ is the usual dimensional regularization scale and $`\nu _i𝐍`$ are arbitrary powers of the propagators. The corresponding scalar integral, we denote by $`I_0^N`$. These integrals represent generalizations of the usual integrals in practical calculations, where $`\nu _i=1`$. However, the most natural presentation of the reduction method discussed here is in terms of these generalized integrals.

The corresponding expressions of the above integrals in Feynman parameter space $`^\mathrm{?}`$ reads

$`I_0^N(D;\{\nu _i\})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{i}}{(4\pi )^2}}(4\pi \mu ^2)^{2D/2}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(_{i=1}^N\nu _iD/2\right)}{_{i=1}^N\mathrm{\Gamma }(\nu _i)}}(1)^{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{i=1}^N\nu _i}{\displaystyle _0^1}\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\mathrm{d}y_iy_i^{\nu _i1}\right)`$ (2)
$`\times \delta \left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}y_i1\right)\left[{\displaystyle \underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i,j=1}{i<j}}{\overset{N}{}}}y_iy_j\left(r_ir_j\right)^2\mathrm{i}ϵ\right]^{D/2\mathrm{\Sigma }_{i=1}^N\nu _i},`$
$`I_{\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _P}^N(D;\{\nu _i\})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k,j_1,\mathrm{},j_N0}{2k+\mathrm{\Sigma }j_i=P}}{}}\left\{[g]^k[r_1]^{j_1}\mathrm{}[r_N]^{j_N}\right\}_{\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _P}{\displaystyle \frac{(4\pi \mu ^2)^{Pk}}{(2)^k}}\left[{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\nu _i+j_i)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\nu _i)}}\right]`$ (3)
$`\times I_0^N(D+2(Pk);\{\nu _i+j_i\}),`$
where $`\{[g]^k[r_1]^{j_1}\mathrm{}[r_N]^{j_N}\}_{\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _P}`$ represents a symmetric (with respect to $`\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _P`$) combination of tensors, each term of which is composed of $`k`$ metric tensors and $`j_i`$ external momenta $`r_i`$ (for example, $`\left\{gr_1\right\}_{\mu _1\mu _2\mu _3}=g_{\mu _1\mu _2}r_{1\mu _3}+g_{\mu _1\mu _3}r_{1\mu _2}+g_{\mu _2\mu _3}r_{1\mu _1}`$). The general results (2) and (3) represent massless versions of the results that have originally been derived by Davydychev $`^\mathrm{?}`$ for the case of massive Feynman integrals. With the decomposition (3), the problem of calculating the tensor integrals has been reduced to the calculation of the general scalar integrals.

## 3 Reduction of scalar integrals

As is well known, the direct evaluation of the general scalar integral (2) represents a non-trivial problem. However, with the help of recursion relations, the problem can be significantly simplified in the sense that the calculation of the original scalar integral can be reduced to the calculation of a certain number of simpler fundamental (basic) integrals.

Owing to the translational invariance, the dimensionally regulated integrals satisfy the following identity $`^\mathrm{?}`$:

$$0\frac{\mathrm{d}^Dl}{(2\pi )^D}\frac{}{l^\mu }\left(\frac{z_0l^\mu +_{i=1}^Nz_ir_i^\mu }{A_1^{\nu _1}\mathrm{}A_N^{\nu _N}}\right),$$
(4)
where $`z_i(i=1\mathrm{}N)`$ are arbitrary constants and $`z_0=_{i=1}^Nz_i`$. After the differentiation and some algebraic manipulations $`^\mathrm{?}`$ the identity (4) takes the form

$$\underset{i,j=1}{\overset{N}{}}(r_jr_i)^2z_i\nu _jI_0^N(D;\{\nu _k+\delta _{kj}\})=\underset{i,j=1}{\overset{N}{}}z_i\nu _jI_0^N(D;\{\nu _k+\delta _{kj}\delta _{ki}\})(D\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\nu _j)z_0I_0^N(D;\{\nu _k\}).$$
(5)
In arriving at (5), it has been understood that $`I_0^N(D;\mathrm{},\nu _l,0,\nu _{l+1},\mathrm{})`$ $`I_0^{N1}(D;\mathrm{},\nu _l,\nu _{l+1},\mathrm{})`$.

The relation (5) represents the starting point for the derivation of the recursion relations for scalar integrals. We have obtained the fundamental set of recursion relations by choosing the arbitrary constants $`z_i(i=1\mathrm{}N)`$ so as to satisfy the following system of linear equations:

$$_{i=1}^Nr_{ij}z_i=C,j=1,\mathrm{},N,r_{ij}=(r_ir_j)^2,$$
(6)
where $`C`$ is an arbitrary constant. If (6) is taken into account, the relation (5), after a few manipulations,$`^\mathrm{?}`$ reduces to recursion relation

$$CI_0^N(D2;\{\nu _k\})=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}z_iI_0^N(D2;\{\nu _k\delta _{ki}\})+(4\pi \mu ^2)(D1\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\nu _j)z_0I_0^N(D;\{\nu _k\}),$$
(7)
where $`z_i`$ are given by the solution of the system (6). This is a generalized form of the recursion relation which connects the scalar integrals in different number of dimensions $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$.

By directly choosing the constants $`z_i`$ in (5) in a such a way that $`z_i=\delta _{ik}`$, for $`k=1,\mathrm{},N`$, we arrive at a system of $`N`$ equations which is always valid:

$$\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}(r_kr_j)^2\nu _jI_0^N(D;\{\nu _i+\delta _{ij}\})=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\nu _jI_0^N(D;\{\nu _i+\delta _{ij}\delta _{ik}\})(D\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\nu _j)I_0^N(D;\{\nu _i\}).$$
(8)
If the system (8) can be solved with respect to $`I_0^N(D;\{\nu _i+\delta _{ij}\})`$, $`j=1,\mathrm{},N`$, the solutions represent the recursion relations.

The use of the relations (7) and (8) in practical calculations depends on whether the kinematic determinants

$$\mathrm{det}(R_N)=\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}0& r_{12}& \mathrm{}& r_{1N}& \\ r_{12}& 0& \mathrm{}& r_{2N}& \\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \\ r_{1N}& r_{2N}& \mathrm{}& 0& \end{array}\right),\mathrm{det}(S_N)=\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}0& 1& 1& \mathrm{}& 1\\ 1& 0& r_{12}& \mathrm{}& r_{1N}\\ 1& r_{12}& 0& \mathrm{}& r_{2N}\\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}\\ 1& r_{1N}& r_{2N}& \mathrm{}& 0\end{array}\right)$$
(9)
are equal to zero or not. We distinguish the following four different types of recursion:

* Case I: $`\mathrm{det}(S_N)0`$, $`\mathrm{det}(R_N)0`$; ($`C0`$ and $`z_00`$)
* Case II: $`\mathrm{det}(S_N)0`$, $`\mathrm{det}(R_N)=0`$; ($`C=0`$ and $`z_00`$)
* Case III: $`\mathrm{det}(S_N)=0`$, $`\mathrm{det}(R_N)0`$; ($`C0`$ and $`z_0=0`$)
* Case IV: $`\mathrm{det}(S_N)=0`$, $`\mathrm{det}(R_N)=0`$; ($`C0`$ and $`z_0=0`$) or ($`C=0`$ and $`z_0=0`$),

where we indicated the necessary choice for the constants $`C`$ and $`z_0`$ in a way that the system (6) has solution and the most useful recursion relations emerge.

Making use of the relations (7) and (8), each scalar integral $`I_0^N(D;\{\nu _i\})`$ can be represented as a linear combination:

$$I_0^N(D;\{\nu _k\})=_ic_i(D,r_{ij})I_0^{N1}(D^{(i)};\{\nu _k^{(i)}\})+\lambda I_0^N(D^{};\{1\}),$$
(10)
where for the dimension $`D^{}`$ one usually chooses $`4+2\epsilon `$ or $`6+2\epsilon `$. Infinitesimal parameter $`\epsilon `$ is regulating the divergences. Parameter $`\lambda `$ equals 0 for Cases II, III and IV $`^\mathrm{?}`$. It follows that in all the above cases, with the exception of the Case I, the integrals with $`N`$ external lines can be represented in terms of the integrals with smaller number of external lines. Consequently, then, there exists a fundamental set of integrals of the form $`I_0^N(4+2\epsilon ;\{1\})`$ in terms of which all integrals can be represented as a linear combination.

Therefore,$`^\mathrm{?}`$ any dimensionally regulated one-loop N-point Feynman integral can be represented in terms of six types of box integrals ($`N=4`$), one type of triangle integral ($`N=3`$) and the general (arbitrary $`D`$, $`\nu _1`$ and $`\nu _2`$) two-point integral ($`N=2`$). The types of the integrals are determined by number of vanishing kinematic variables. Five of the six basic box integrals are IR divergent in 4 dimensions, while the basic triangle integral is finite. However, all the basic box integrals are finite in 6 dimensions. Thus, an alternative fundamental set of integrals is comprised of five box integrals in 6 dimensions, one box and triangle integral in 4 dimensions and the general two-point integral. This fundamental set of integrals is particularly interesting because the integral $`I_0^2`$ is the only divergent one. In the final result, all the divergences, IR as well as UV, are contained in the general two-point integrals and associated coefficients. The expressions for all relevant basic integrals can be found in the literature $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$.

## 4 Conclusion

Through the tensor decomposition and scalar reduction procedure presented, any massless one-loop Feynman integral with generic 4-dimensional momenta can be expressed as a linear combination of a fundamental set of scalar integrals: six box integrals in $`D=6`$, a triangle integral in $`D=4`$, and a general two$``$point integral. All the divergences present in the original integral are contained in the general two-point integral and associated coefficients.

## Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the organizers of the XXXVIIIth Rencontres de Moriond conference for the invitation and for an exciting conference.

## References