Z0 - boson production in association with a top anti-top pair at NLO accuracy with parton shower effects

TL;DR

This paper provides precise predictions for Z0 boson production with top-antitop pairs at NLO accuracy, incorporating parton shower effects to improve realism in collider simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework combining three established codes for accurate NLO predictions with parton shower effects for Z0 + top-antitop production.

Findings

Predicted cross sections at NLO with shower effects.

Validated the framework with existing Monte Carlo tools.

Enhanced accuracy in modeling Z0 + top-antitop events.

Abstract

We present predictions for the production cross section of a Standard Model Z0-boson in association with a top-antitop pair at the next-to-leading order accuracy in QCD, matched with shower Monte Carlo programs to evolve the system down to the hadronization energy scale. We adopt a framework based on three well established numerical codes, namely the POWHEG-BOX, used for computing the cross section, HELAC-NLO, which generates all necessary input matrix elements, and finally a parton shower program, such as PYTHIA or HERWIG, which allows for including t-quark and Z0-boson decays at the leading order accuracy and generates shower emissions, hadronization and hadron decays.