No Arabic abstract
We present an implementation of electroweak Z-boson production in association with two jets at hadron colliders in the POWHEG framework, a method that allows the interfacing of NLO-QCD calculations with parton-shower Monte Carlo programs. We focus on the leptonic decays of the weak gauge boson, and take photonic and non-resonant contributions to the matrix elements fully into account. We provide results for observables of particular importance for the suppression of QCD backgrounds to vector-boson fusion processes by means of central-jet-veto techniques. While parton-shower effects are small for most observables associated with the two hardest jets, they can be more pronounced for distributions that are employed in central-jet-veto studies.
We present a state-of-the-art calculation of the next-to-leading-order electroweak corrections to ZZ production, including the leptonic decays of the Z bosons into $mu^+mu^-mathrm{e}^+mathrm{e}^-$ or $mu^+mu^-mu^+mu^-$ final states. We use complete leading-order and next-to-leading-order matrix elements for four-lepton production, including contributions of virtual photons and all off-shell effects of Z bosons, where the finite Z-boson width is taken into account using the complex-mass scheme. The matrix elements are implemented into Monte Carlo programs allowing for the evaluation of arbitrary differential distributions. We present integrated and differential cross sections for the LHC at 13 TeV both for an inclusive setup where only lepton identification cuts are applied, and for a setup motivated by Higgs-boson analyses in the four-lepton decay channel. The electroweak corrections are divided into photonic and purely weak contributions. The former show the well-known pronounced tails near kinematical thresholds and resonances; the latter are generically at the level of $sim-5%$ and reach several $-10%$ in the high-energy tails of distributions. Comparing the results for $mu^+mu^-mathrm{e}^+mathrm{e}^-$ and $mu^+mu^-mu^+mu^-$ final states, we find significant differences mainly in distributions that are sensitive to the $mu^+mu^-$ pairing in the $mu^+mu^-mu^+mu^-$ final state. Differences between $mu^+mu^-mathrm{e}^+mathrm{e}^-$ and $mu^+mu^-mu^+mu^-$ channels due to interferences of equal-flavour leptons in the final state can reach up to $10%$ in off-shell-sensitive regions. Contributions induced by incoming photons, i.e. photon-photon and quark-photon channels, are included, but turn out to be phenomenologically unimportant.
The production of a neutral and a charged vector boson with subsequent decays into three charged leptons and a neutrino is a very important process for precision tests of the Standard Model of elementary particles and in searches for anomalous triple-gauge-boson couplings. In this article, the first computation of next-to-leading-order electroweak corrections to the production of the four-lepton final states $mu^+mu^- e^+ u_e$, $mu^+mu^- e^- bar u_e$, $mu^+mu^- mu^+ u_mu$, and $mu^+mu^- mu^- bar u_mu$ at the Large Hadron Collider is presented. We use the complete matrix elements at leading and next-to-leading order, including all off-shell effects of intermediate massive vector bosons and virtual photons. The relative electroweak corrections to the fiducial cross sections from quark-induced partonic processes vary between $-3%$ and $-6%$, depending significantly on the event selection. At the level of differential distributions, we observe large negative corrections of up to $-30%$ in the high-energy tails of distributions originating from electroweak Sudakov logarithms. Photon-induced contributions at next-to-leading order raise the leading-order fiducial cross section by $+2%$. Interference effects in final states with equal-flavour leptons are at the permille level for the fiducial cross section, but can lead to sizeable effects in off-shell sensitive phase-space regions.
In this article we calculate the next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD corrections for single on-shell top-quark production in association with two jets at proton-proton colliders. The tW channel is assumed to be measured independently. The QCD corrections to the inclusive cross section are about 28 (22)% for top (anti-top) quark production at the 13 TeV LHC. Theoretical errors are dominated by scale uncertainties, which are found to be around 5% at NLO. Results for various kinematical distributions are also provided using a well-motivated dynamical scale. The QCD corrections are found to have a non-trivial dependence on the phase-space.
Cross sections and differential distributions for ZA production in association with two jets via vector boson fusion are presented at next-to-leading order in QCD. The leptonic decays of the Z boson with full off-shell effects and spin correlations are taken into account. The uncertainties due to different scale choices and pdf sets are studied. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of including anomalous quartic gauge couplings at NLO QCD.
The first results on next-to-leading order QCD corrections to graviton-induced processes in hadron collisions in models of TeV-scale gravity are presented focusing on the case of dilepton pair production in bar p p and pp collisions. Distributions in the invariant mass Q, the longitudinal fraction x_F, the rapidity Y and the forward-backward asymmetry of the lepton pair are studied. The quantitative impact of the QCD corrections for searches of extra dimensions at hadron colliders is investigated. It turns out that at the LHC (sqrt{S}=14 TeV) the K-factor is rather large (K=1.6) for large invariant mass Q of the lepton pair, indicating the importance of accounting for these QCD corrections in the experimental search for TeV-scale gravity. At the Tevatron, the K-factor does not substantially deviate from the Standard Model value. However, its inclusion is necessitated to make the cross-section stable with respect to scale variations.