On the next-to-next-to-leading order evolution of flavour-singlet fragmentation functions

We present the third-order contributions to the quark-gluon and gluon-quark tirnelike splitting functions for the evolution of fragmentation functions in perturbative QCD. These quantities have been derived by studying physical evolution kernels for photon- and Higgs-exchange structure functions in deep-inelastic scattering and their counterparts in semi-inclusive annihilation, together with constraints from the momentum sum rule and the supersymmetric limit. For this purpose we have also calculated the second-order coefficient functions for one-hadron inclusive Higgs decay in the heavy-top limit. A numerically tolerable uncertainty remains for the quark-gluon splitting function, which does not affect the endpoint logarithms for small and large momentum fractions. We briefly discuss these limits and illustrate the numerical impact of the third-order corrections. Compact and accurate parametrizations are provided for all third-order timelike splitting functions. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.