https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-13532-9
Regular Article
Time-Like heavy-flavour thresholds for fragmentation functions: the light-quark matching condition at NNLO
1
Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Boltzmannstraße 8, 85748, Garching, Germany
2
Physik-Institut, Universität Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057, Zurich, Switzerland
Received:
15
July
2024
Accepted:
22
October
2024
Published online:
20
November
2024
Matching conditions are universal ingredients that describe how fragmentation functions change when heavy-flavour thresholds are crossed during the factorisation scale evolution. They are the last missing piece for a consistent description of observables with identified final-state hadrons at next-to-next-to leading order accuracy in quantum chromodynamics. We present an analytical form of the matching condition for light-flavour to hadron fragmentation function at next-to-next-to leading order. The derivation is performed by extending the formalism employed in the extraction of the next-to leading order matching conditions to the subsequent order, making use of 
annihilation cross sections. We obtain the first non-trivial heavy-quark effect in the light-quark fragmentation functions and provide results in Mellin space.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-13532-9.
© The Author(s) 2024
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