Electroweak non-resonant NLO corrections to e+ e- -> W+ W- b bbar in the t tbar resonance region

TL;DR

This paper calculates important electroweak NLO corrections to top-antitop production near resonance in e+ e- collisions, crucial for precision measurements at future linear colliders.

Contribution

It provides the first complete analysis of electroweak NLO effects in top pair production including non-resonant contributions, enhancing theoretical accuracy.

Findings

Electroweak NLO corrections are significant near the resonance region.

Non-resonant contributions impact the total cross section.

Results are essential for precision top physics at future colliders.

Abstract

We analyse subleading electroweak effects in the top anti-top resonance production region in e+ e- collisions which arise due to the decay of the top and anti-top quarks into the W+ W- b bbar final state. These are NLO corrections adopting the non-relativistic power counting v ~ alpha_s ~ sqrt(alpha_EW). In contrast to the QCD corrections which have been calculated (almost) up to NNNLO, the parametrically larger NLO electroweak contributions have not been completely known so far, but are mandatory for the required accuracy at a future linear collider. The missing parts of these NLO contributions arise from matching coefficients of non-resonant production-decay operators in unstable-particle effective theory which correspond to off-shell top production and decay and other non-resonant irreducible background processes to t tbar production. We consider the total cross section of the e+ e- -> W+ W- b bbar process and additionally implement cuts on the invariant masses of the W+ b and W- bbar pairs.