https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11961-6
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Constraining the top-quark mass within the global MSHT PDF fit
1
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Notkestr. 85, 22607, Hamburg, Germany
2
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sussex, Sussex House, BN1 9RH, Brighton, UK
Received:
14
July
2023
Accepted:
24
August
2023
Published online:
11
September
2023
We examine the ability of experimental measurements of top-quark pair production to constrain both the top-quark mass and the strong coupling within the global MSHT parton distribution function (PDF) fit. Specifically, we consider ATLAS and CMS measurements of differential distributions taken at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, as well as 
total cross section data taken at a variety of experiments, and compare to theoretical predictions including next-to-next-to-leading order corrections. We find that supplementing the global fit with this additional information results in relatively strong constraints on the top-quark mass, and is also able to bound the strong coupling in a limited fashion. Our final result is 
and is compatible with the world average pole mass extracted from cross section measurements of 
by the Particle Data Group. We also study the effect of different top-quark masses on the gluon parton distribution function, finding changes at high x which nonetheless lie within the large PDF uncertainties in this region.
© The Author(s) 2023
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
