Paper detail

The ABM parton distributions tuned to LHC data

We present a global fit of parton distributions at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD. The fit is based on the world data for deep-inelastic scattering, fixed-target data for the Drell-Yan process and includes, for the first time, data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for the Drell-Yan process and the hadro-production of top-quark pairs. The analysis applies the fixed-flavor number scheme for n_f=3,4,5, uses the MS-bar scheme for the strong coupling α_s and the heavy-quark masses and keeps full account of the correlations among all non-perturbative parameters. At NNLO this returns the values of α_s(M_Z) = 0.1132 +- 0.0011 and m_t(pole) = 171.2 +- 2.4 GeV for the top-quark pole mass.The fit results are used to compute benchmark cross sections for Higgs production at the LHC to NNLO accuracy. We compare our results to those obtained by other groups and show that differences can be linked to different theoretical descriptions of the underlying physical processes.