Unitarity methods for Mellin moments of Drell-Yan cross sections

Abstract

We develop a method for computing Mellin moments of single inclusive cross sections such as Drell-Yan production directly from forward scattering diagrams, by invoking unitarity in the form of cutting equations. We provide a diagram-independent prescription for eliminating contributions from unwanted cuts at the level of an expansion in the reciprocal omega=1/z variable. The modified sum over powers of omega produces the result from physical cuts only, with the nth coefficient precisely equal to the nth Mellin moment of the cross section. We demonstrate and validate our method for representative one- and two-loop diagrams.