Zero-bin Subtraction and the Q_t Spectrum Beyond Leading Power

Abstract In this paper, we present an algorithm to construct the qT distribution at NLO accuracy to arbitrary power precision, including the assembly of suitable zero-bin subtrahends, in a mathematically well-defined way for a generic choice of rapidity-divergence regularisation prescription. In its derivation, we divide the phase space into two sectors, the interior of the integration domain as well as the integration boundary, which we include here for the first time. To demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of our algorithm, we calculate the N2LP corrections for Higgs hadroproduction for the first time. We observe that our approximate N2LP-accurate qT spectra replicate the asymptotic behaviour of the full QCD calculation to a much better degree than the previously available results, both within the qT → 0 limit and in the large-qT domain for all the involved partonic processes. While playing a minor role at larger transverse momenta, we show that the newly incorporated boundary contribution plays a vital role in the qT → 0 limit, where any subleading power accuracy would be lost without them. In particular, our N2LP-accurate qT expansion can approximate the exact qT distribution up to qT ≈ 30 GeV at the percent level for rapidities |YH| ≲ 3.