W and Z/gamma* boson production in association with a bottom-antibottom pair

TL;DR

This paper provides precise next-to-leading order QCD calculations for W/Z boson production with bottom-antibottom pairs at hadron colliders, emphasizing the importance of accurate simulations for various observables at the LHC.

Contribution

It introduces automated NLO QCD calculations including bottom-quark mass effects and spin correlations, integrated with parton shower simulations using MadLoop, MadFKS, and aMC@NLO.

Findings

Accurate NLO predictions for W/Z + bar{b} production.

Demonstrates the significance of spin correlations and bottom-quark mass effects.

Highlights the impact on LHC observable analyses.

Abstract

We present a study of l\nu b\bar{b} and l+ l- b\bar{b} production at hadron colliders. Our results, accurate to the next-to-leading order in QCD, are based on automatic matrix-element calculations performed by MadLoop and MadFKS, and are given at both the parton level, and after the matching with the Herwig event generator, achieved with aMC@NLO. We retain the complete dependence on the bottom-quark mass, and include exactly all spin correlations of final-state leptons. We discuss the cases of several observables at the LHC which highlight the importance of accurate simulations.