Paper detail

Production of Prompt Photons

After a brief review of the production dynamics of prompt single photons in hadron collisions, I summarize a new QCD calculation of the transverse momentum distribution of continuum prompt photon pairs produced by QCD subprocesses, including all-orders soft-gluon resummation valid at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. Resummation is necessary to obtain reliable predictions, as well as good agreement with data from the Fermilab Tevatron, in the range of transverse momentum where the cross section is largest. Predictions are made for the Large Hadron Collider where the QCD diphoton continuum is shown to have a softer spectrum in transverse momentum than the Higgs boson signal.