We derive the threshold-resummed total cross section for heavy quark production in hadronic collisions accurate to next-to-next-to-leading logarithm, employing recent advances on soft anomalous dimension matrices for massive pair production in the relevant kinematic limit. We also derive the relation between heavy quark threshold resummations for fixed pair kinematics and the inclusive cross section. As a check of our results, we have verified that they reproduce all poles of the color-averaged $q\overline{q}\to t\overline{t}$ amplitudes at two loops, noting that the latter are insensitive to the color-antisymmetric terms of the soft anomalous dimension.

• Received 27 July 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.80.074017