Production of $\gamma Z g$ and associated processes via gluon fusion at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper calculates the production rate and features of the process gg → γZg at hadron colliders, highlighting its significance as both a potential background for new physics and a process with observable events at the LHC.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed standard model prediction for gg → γZg production at hadron colliders, including cross sections and kinematic distributions, with comparisons to NLO calculations.

Findings

Several thousand events expected at LHC based on predictions.

The process can serve as a background to new physics signals.

Comparison with NLO calculations shows consistency and highlights features.

Abstract

We present results for the process $gg \to \gamma Z g$ within the standard model at hadron colliders. Due to large gluon flux at the LHC and the proposed HE-LHC, this process can have significant cross section at these machines. Several thousand such events have already been produced at the LHC according to the standard model predictions. This process can also be a background to new physics signals. We discuss some of the important features of this process related to the structure of its amplitude. We also compute the total cross section at the hadron colliders and give some important kinematic distributions. A comparison of our results is made with the corresponding NLO calculation using MCFM program. We briefly discuss the production of $\gamma \gamma g $ and $\gamma \gamma Z$ via gluon fusion. The amplitude of these processes are closely related to the $gg \to\gamma Z g$ amplitude.