TY - JOUR AU - Falcioni, G. AU - Herzog, F. AU - Moch, S. AU - Pelloni, A. AU - Vogt, A. TI - Four-loop splitting functions in QCD – the gluon-gluon case – JO - Physics letters / B VL - 860 IS - DESY-24-144 SN - 0031-9163 CY - Amsterdam PB - North-Holland Publ. M1 - PUBDB-2024-06094 M1 - DESY-24-144 M1 - arXiv:2410.08089 M1 - ZU-TH 47/24 M1 - LTH 1384 SP - 139194 PY - 2025 N1 - the DFG through the Research Unit FOR 2926, project number 40824754, and DFG grant MO 1801/4-2, and the ERC Advanced Grant 101095857. AB - We present the even-N moments N ≤ 20 of the fourth-order (N<sup>3</sup>LO) contribution P<sub>gg</sub><sup> (3)</sup>(x) to the quark-to-gluon splitting function in perturbative QCD. These moments, obtained by analyticallycomputing off-shell operator matrix elements for a general gauge group, agree with all known results, in particular with the moments N ≤ 10 derived before from structure functions in deep-inelastic scattering. Using the new moments and the available endpoint constraints, we construct approximations for P<sub>gg</sub><sup> (3)</sup>(x) which improve upon those obtained from the lowest five even moments. The remaining uncertainties of this function are now practically irrelevant at momentum fractions x > 0.1. The resulting errors of the convolution ofP<sub>gg</sub> at N<sup>3</sup>LO with a typical gluon distribution are small at x >~10<sup>−3</sup> and exceed 1% only at x <~10<sup>−4</sup> for a strong coupling α<sub>s</sub> = 0.2. The present results for P<sub>gg</sub><sup> (3)</sup>(x) should thus be sufficient for most collider-physics applications. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:001394711600001 DO - DOI:10.1016/j.physletb.2024.139194 UR - https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/615336 ER -