Abstract
We present results of the first calculation of next-to-leading-order electroweak corrections to W-boson pair production at the LHC that fully takes into account leptonic W-boson decays and off-shell effects. Employing realistic event selections, we discuss the corrections in situations that are typical for the study of W-boson pairs as a signal process or of Higgs-boson decays H → WW∗, to which W-boson pair production represents an irreducible background. In particular, we compare the full off-shell results, obtained treating the W-boson resonances in the complex-mass scheme, to previous results in the so-called double-pole approximation, which is based on an expansion of the loop amplitudes about the W resonance poles. At small and intermediate scales, i.e. in particular in angular and rapidity distributions, the two approaches show the expected agreement at the level of fractions of a percent, but larger differences appear in the TeV range. For transverse-momentum distributions, the differences can even exceed the 10% level in the TeV range where “background diagrams” with one instead of two resonant W bosons gain in importance because of recoil effects.
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Biedermann, B., Billoni, M., Denner, A. et al. Next-to-leading-order electroweak corrections to pp → W+W− → 4 leptons at the LHC. J. High Energ. Phys. 2016, 65 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2016)065
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2016)065