LHC Sensitivity to Wbb Production via Double Parton Scattering

TL;DR

This paper assesses the Large Hadron Collider's ability to detect double parton scattering in W boson and b-quark pair production, using specific kinematic variables and NLO predictions to distinguish it from backgrounds.

Contribution

It introduces a method to identify double parton scattering in Wbb production at 7 TeV using optimized kinematic variables and NLO calculations, demonstrating potential observability.

Findings

Double parton scattering can be observed with ~10 significance.

Identification is feasible if the effective cross section is around 12 mb.

NLO predictions are crucial for accurate observable descriptions.

Abstract

We investigate the potential to observe double parton scattering at the Large Hadron Collider in pp -> W bb X -> mu nu bb X at 7 TeV. Our analysis tests the efficacy of several kinematic variables in isolating the double parton process of interest from the single parton process and relevant backgrounds for the first 10/fb of integrated luminosity. These variables are constructed to expose the independent nature of the two subprocesses in double parton scattering, pp -> mu nu and pp -> bb X. We use next-to-leading order perturbative predictions for the double parton and single parton scattering components of W bb and for the pertinent backgrounds. The next-to-leading order contributions are important for a proper description of some of the observables we compute. We find that the double parton process can be identified and measured with significance ~ 10, provided the double parton scattering effective cross section ~ 12 mb.