The double fermionic contribution to the four-loop quark-to-gluon splitting function

Abstract

We have computed the first 30 even-N moments for the double fermionic (nf2) part of the quark-to-gluon splitting function Pgq at the fourth order of perturbative QCD via the renormalization of off-shell operator matrix elements. From these results we have determined the all-N form, and hence the exact x-space expression, using systems of Diophantine equations for its coefficients. The dominant and subdominant leading small-x nf2 contributions to Pgq(3)(x) are of the form x−1ln⁡x and ln4⁡x, respectively; the leading large-x term is ln4⁡(1−x). The coefficient of the first of these is new, the other two agree with results obtained before and thus provide checks of our results.