W b bbar production in POWHEG

TL;DR

This paper implements a next-to-leading order QCD calculation for W boson production with bottom quarks using the POWHEG method, interfaced with Monte Carlo generators for realistic collider simulations.

Contribution

It introduces an automated implementation of NLO W b bbar production in POWHEG BOX, including spin correlations and comparison of shower Monte Carlo outputs.

Findings

Consistent NLO W b bbar production results at Tevatron and LHC.

Comparison of PYTHIA and HERWIG shower outputs.

Validation of the POWHEG implementation against phenomenological data.

Abstract

We present an implementation of the next-to-leading order hadronic production of a W boson in association with a pair of massive bottom quarks in the framework of POWHEG, a method to consistently interface NLO QCD calculations with shower Monte Carlo generators. The process has been implemented using the POWHEG BOX, an automated computer code that sistematically applies the POWHEG method to NLO QCD calculations. Spin correlations in the decay of the W boson into leptons have been taken into account using standard approximated techniques. We present phenomenological results for W b bbar-> l nu b bbar production, at both the Tevatron and the LHC, obtained by showering the POWHEG results with PYTHIA and HERWIG, and we discuss the outputs of the two different shower Monte Carlo programs.