Inclusive heavy flavor hadroproduction in NLO QCD: The exact analytic result

Abstract We present the first exact analytic result for all partonic channels contributing to the total cross section for the production of a pair of heavy flavors in hadronic collisions in NLO QCD. Our calculation is a step in the derivation of the top quark pair production cross section at NNLO in QCD, which is a cornerstone of the precision LHC program. Our results uncover the analytical structures behind observables with heavy flavors at higher orders. They also reveal surprising and non-trivial implications for kinematics close to partonic threshold.