Abstract
We present the virtual corrections due to the top-quark loops for the process gg → ZZ at next-to-leading order in QCD. The associated two-loop box diagrams are computed using a small-transverse-momentum expansion. Our results are then merged with those available in the complementary energy region, obtained via a high-energy expansion, in order to provide an analytic result that is valid in the whole phase space. The results presented allow for an efficient modelling of the signal-background interference as well as the irreducible background in off-shell Higgs production.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Luigi Bellafronte and Pier Paolo Giardino for participating in the early stages of this project. We are greatful to the authors of ref. [43] for providing us with the results for additional phase-space points and for useful discussions. The work of RG is supported in part by the Italian MUR Departments of Excellence grant 2023-2027 “Quantum Frontiers” and the ICSC — Centro Nazionale di Ricerca in High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing, funded by European Union — NextGenerationEU. The authors acknowledge support from the COMETA COST Action CA22130. The diagrams in this paper have been drawn using JaxoDraw [69].
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Degrassi, G., Gröber, R. & Vitti, M. Virtual QCD corrections to gg → ZZ: top-quark loops from a transverse-momentum expansion. J. High Energ. Phys. 2024, 244 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2024)244
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2024)244