Infrared structure of e+ e- ---> 2 jets at NNLO

Abstract The production of two jets is the simplest exclusive quantum chromodynamics process in electron–positron annihilation. Using this process, we examine the structure of next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) corrections to jet production observables. We derive a subtraction formalism including double real radiation at tree level and single real radiation at one loop. For two-jet production, these subtraction terms coincide with the full matrix elements, thus highlighting the phase space structure of the subtraction procedure. We then analytically compute the infrared singularities arising from each partonic channel. For the purely virtual (two-parton) NNLO corrections, these take the well known form predicted by Catani's infrared factorization formula. We demonstrate that individual terms in the infrared factorization formula can be identified with infrared singular terms from three- and four-parton final states, leaving only single poles and a contribution from the one-loop soft gluon current, which subsequently cancels between the three- and four-parton final states. Summing over all different final states, we observe an explicit cancellation of all infrared poles and recover the known two-loop correction to the hadronic R -ratio.