No Arabic abstract
The forward-backward (FB) asymmetry of $b$ quarks in $e^+e^-$ collisions at the Z pole measured at LEP, $A_{FB}^{0,b} = 0.0992pm0.0016$, remains today the electroweak precision observable with the largest disagreement (2.4$sigma$) with respect to the Standard Model prediction, $(A_{FB}^{0,b})_{_{rm th}} = 0.1030 pm 0.0002$. Beyond the dominant statistical uncertainties, QCD effects, such as $b$-quark showering and hadronization, are the leading sources of $A_{FB}^{0,b}$ systematic uncertainty, and have not been revised in the last twenty years. We reassess the QCD uncertainties of the eight original $A_{FB}^{0,b}$ LEP measurements, using modern parton shower PYTHIA-8 and PYTHIA-8 + VINCIA simulations with nine different implementations of soft and collinear radiation as well as of parton fragmentation. Our analysis, combined with NNLO massive $b$-quark corrections independently computed recently, indicates total propagated QCD uncertainties of $sim$0.7% and $sim$0.3% for the lepton-charge and jet-charge analyses, respectively, that are about a factor of two smaller than those of the original LEP results. Accounting for such updated QCD effects leads to a new $A_{FB}^{0,b} = 0.0996pm0.0016$ average, with a data-theory tension slightly reduced from 2.4$sigma$ to 2.1$sigma$. Confirmation or resolution of this long-term discrepancy requires a new high-luminosity $e^+e^-$ collider collecting orders-of-magnitude more data at the Z pole to significantly reduce the $A_{FB}^{0,b}$ statistical uncertainties.
We present NLO QCD results for W/Z gauge boson production with bottom quark pairs at the Tevatron including full bottom-quark mass effects. We study the impact of QCD corrections on both total cross-section and invariant mass distribution of the bottom-quark pair. Including NLO QCD corrections greatly reduces the dependence of the tree-level cross-section on the renormalization and factorization scales. We also compare our calculation to a calculation that considers massless bottom quarks and find that the bottom-quark mass effects amount to about 8-10% of the total NLO QCD cross-section and can impact the shape of the bottom-quark pair invariant mass distribution, in particular in the low invariant mass region.
Using the most general effective Hamiltonian comprising scalar,vector and tensor type interactions, we have written the branching ratio, the forward-backward (FB) asymmetry and the normalized FB asymmetry as functions of the new Wilson coefficients. It is found that the branching ratio depends on all new coefficients,but the dependence of asymmetries on coefficients could be analyzed only for one Wilson coefficient.
We review in some detail the QCD corrections to the measurement of the forward-backward charge asymmetry of heavy quarks in the $mathrm{e^+e^-rightarrow Qoverline{Q}(g)}$ process at the Z pole. We show that the size of these corrections can be reduced by an order of magnitude by using simple cuts on jet acollinearity. Such a reduction is expected to lead to systematic uncertainties at the $Delta mathrm{A_{FB}^{0,Q}} approx 10^{-4}$ level, opening up the path to high precision electroweak measurements with heavy flavors at future high luminosity $mathrm{e^+e^-}$ colliders like the FCC-ee.
We study logarithmically enhanced electromagnetic corrections to the decay rate in the high dilepton invariant mass region as well as corrections to the forward backward asymmetry (FBA) of the inclusive rare decay $bar{B} to X_s ell^+ ell^-$. As expected, the relative effect of these corrections in the high dilepton mass region is around -8% for the muonic final state and therefore much larger than in the low dilepton mass region. We also present a complete phenomenological analysis, to improved NNLO accuracy, of the dilepton mass spectrum and the FBA integrated in the low dilepton mass region, including a new approach to the zero of the FBA. The latter represents one of the most precise predictions in flavour physics with a theoretical uncertainty of order 5%. We find $(q_0^2)_{mumu} = (3.50 pm 0.12) gev^2$. For the high dilepton invariant mass region, we have ${cal B}(bar Bto X_smumu)_{rm high} = (2.40^{+0.69}_{-0.62}) times 10^{-7}$. The dominant uncertainty is due to the $1/m_b$ corrections and can be significantly reduced in the future. For the low dilepton invariant mass region, we confirm previous results up to small corrections.
The leading-order accurate description of top quark pair production, as usually employed in standard Monte Carlo event generators, gives no rise to the generation of a forward--backward asymmetry. Yet, non-negligible -- differential as well as inclusive -- asymmetries may be produced if coherent parton showering is used in the hadroproduction of top quark pairs. In this contribution we summarize the outcome of our study of this effect. We present a short comparison of different parton shower implementations and briefly comment on the phenomenology of the colour coherence effect at the Tevatron.