ZZ production at hadron colliders in NNLO QCD

TL;DR

This paper presents the first NNLO QCD calculations for ZZ pair production at hadron colliders, showing significant corrections and the importance of gluon fusion contributions across energies.

Contribution

It provides the first NNLO QCD correction calculations for inclusive ZZ production at hadron colliders, including detailed numerical results for energies from 7 to 14 TeV.

Findings

NNLO corrections increase NLO results by 11-17%.

Gluon fusion contributes about 60% of NNLO effects.

Scale uncertainties remain at ±3% from NLO to NNLO.

Abstract

We report on the first calculation of next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD corrections to the inclusive production of ZZ pairs at hadron colliders. Numerical results are presented for pp collisions with centre-of-mass energy ($\sqrt{s}$) ranging from 7 to 14 TeV. The NNLO corrections increase the NLO result by an amount varying from $11\%$ to $17\%$ as $\sqrt{s}$ goes from 7 to 14 TeV. The loop-induced gluon fusion contribution provides about $60\%$ of the total NNLO effect. When going from NLO to NNLO the scale uncertainties do not decrease and remain at the $\pm 3\%$ level.