Threshold resummation for the top quark charge asymmetry

We study the QCD charge asymmetry in $t\overline{t}$ production at the Tevatron. We investigate the role of higher orders in perturbation theory by considering the resummation of potentially large logarithmic corrections that arise near partonic threshold. This requires us to employ the rapidity-dependent anomalous dimension matrices that describe color mixing due to soft-gluon emission in both quark- and gluon-initiated processes. The charge asymmetry appears directly in the resummed cross section at next-to-leading logarithm (NLL), and we find that the first-order expansion of the NLL-resummed charge asymmetry reproduces the known fixed-order result for the asymmetry well. Beyond its lowest order, the asymmetric component of the cross section is enhanced by the same leading-logarithmic threshold corrections as the total cross section. As a result, the charge asymmetry is robust with respect to the higher-order perturbative corrections generated by threshold resummation. We observe that the asymmetry increases with pair mass and with scattering angle.