Linear power corrections to top quark pair production in hadron collisions

We compute, in the framework of renormalon calculus, the 𝒪(Λ_QCD) corrections to the production of tt pairs in hadron collisions under the assumption that qq→ tt is the dominant partonic channel. This assumption is not applicable to top quark pair production at the LHC but it is valid for the Tevatron where collisions of protons and anti-protons were studied. We show that the linear power correction to the total tt production cross section vanishes provided one uses a short-distance scheme for the top quark mass. We also derive relatively simple formulas for the power corrections to top quark kinematic distributions. Although small numerically, these power corrections exhibit interesting dependencies on top quark kinematics.