Electroweak corrections to W-boson pair production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper presents the first complete calculation of electroweak one-loop corrections to on-shell W-boson pair production at the LHC, highlighting significant photon-induced effects at high energies.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive electroweak correction calculation for W-boson pair production at hadron colliders, including photon-induced channels.

Findings

Photon-induced corrections can be very large at LHC energies.

Electroweak corrections significantly affect total and differential cross sections.

Radiation of additional massive vector bosons has minimal impact.

Abstract

Vector-boson pair production ranks among the most important Standard-Model benchmark processes at the LHC, not only in view of on-going Higgs analyses. These processes may also help to gain a deeper understanding of the electroweak interaction in general, and to test the validity of the Standard Model at highest energies. In this work, the first calculation of the full one-loop electroweak corrections to on-shell W-boson pair production at hadron colliders is presented. We discuss the impact of the corrections on the total cross section as well as on relevant differential distributions. We observe that corrections due to photon-induced channels can be amazingly large at energies accessible at the LHC, while radiation of additional massive vector bosons does not influence the results significantly.