W^+W^+ plus dijet production in the POWHEGBOX

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel NLO calculation of W^+W^+ plus two jets production in the POWHEG framework, enabling more accurate simulations of these processes at hadron colliders.

Contribution

First implementation of a 2 -> 4 process at NLO accuracy within a shower Monte Carlo framework using POWHEGBOX.

Findings

Successful interfacing with PYTHIA and HERWIG for phenomenological studies.

Comparison of NLO and POWHEG+PYTHIA results for various distributions.

Technical improvements in POWHEGBOX to handle complex NLO calculations.

Abstract

We present an implementation of the calculation of the production of W^+W^+ plus two jets at hadron colliders, at next-to-leading order (NLO) in QCD, in the POWHEG framework, which is a method that allows the interfacing of NLO calculations to shower Monte Carlo programs. This is the first 2 -> 4 process to be described to NLO accuracy within a shower Monte Carlo framework. The implementation was built within the POWHEGBOX package. We discuss a few technical improvements that were needed in the POWHEGBOX to deal with the computer intensive nature of the NLO calculation, and argue that further improvements are possible, so that the method can match the complexity that is reached today in NLO calculations. We have interfaced our POWHEG implementation with PYTHIA and HERWIG, and present some phenomenological results, discussing similarities and differences between the pure NLO and the POWHEG+PYTHIA calculation both for inclusive and more exclusive distributions. We have made the relevant code available at the POWHEGBOX web site.