Full NLO massive gauge boson pair production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper provides comprehensive NLO predictions for massive gauge boson pair production at the LHC, including QCD and electroweak corrections, to improve understanding of electroweak interactions and background processes.

Contribution

It offers the first complete NLO calculations for on-shell gauge boson pair production, incorporating both QCD and electroweak effects, with detailed comparisons to experimental data.

Findings

Hierarchy observed between ZZ, WW, and WZ channels in distributions

Theoretical uncertainties are quantified and compared with experimental data

NLO corrections significantly impact cross section predictions

Abstract

Electroweak gauge boson pair production is a very important process at the LHC as it probes the non-abelian structure of electroweak interactions and is a background process for many searches. We present full next-to-leading order predictions for the production cross sections and distributions of on-shell massive gauge boson pair production in the Standard Model, including both QCD and electroweak corrections. The hierarchy between the ZZ, WW and WZ channels, observed in the transverse momentum distributions, will be analyzed. We will also present a comparison with experimental data for the total cross sections including a study of the theoretical uncertainties.