Radiative corrections to the neutral-current Drell-Yan process in the Standard Model and its minimal supersymmetric extension

TL;DR

This paper enhances the theoretical description of the neutral-current Drell-Yan process at colliders by including detailed electroweak radiative corrections, initial state photon contributions, and supersymmetric effects, improving precision for experimental analyses.

Contribution

It introduces new methods for modeling Z-boson resonance with electroweak corrections, analyzes photon-induced processes, and extends calculations to the MSSM, incorporating higher-order effects.

Findings

Comparison of resonance treatment methods with explicit formulas

Quantification of photon-photon and photon-quark contributions under selection cuts

Results on electroweak and QCD corrections in the MSSM

Abstract

An adequate description of the neutral-current Drell-Yan process at the Tevatron and the LHC, in particular, requires the inclusion of electroweak radiative corrections. We extend earlier work in this direction in various ways. First, we define and numerically compare different methods to describe the Z-boson resonance including next-to-leading order electroweak corrections; moreover, we provide explicit analytical expressions for those. Second, we pay particular attention to contributions from photon-photon and photon-quark collisions, which involve photons in the initial state, and work out how their impact can be enhanced by selection cuts. Third, we supplement the O(\alpha) corrections by universal electroweak effects of higher order, such as universal two-loop contributions from \Delta\alpha and \Delta\rho, and the leading two-loop corrections in the high-energy Sudakov regime as well as multi-photon radiation off muons in the structure-function approach. Finally, we present results on the complete next-to-leading order electroweak and QCD corrections within the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model.