Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to ZZ production in association with two jets

TL;DR

This paper presents the first NLO QCD corrections calculation for ZZ production with two jets at hadron colliders, improving theoretical precision for key background processes in new physics searches.

Contribution

It provides the first complete NLO QCD correction calculation for QCD-induced ZZ plus two jets production, including off-shell, photon, and spin effects.

Findings

NLO corrections significantly reduce scale uncertainty.

Kinematic distributions show non-trivial phase space dependence.

Results enhance background modeling for new physics searches.

Abstract

We present the first calculation of next-to-leading order QCD corrections to QCD-induced ZZ production in association with two jets at hadron colliders. Both Z bosons decay leptonically with all off-shell effects, virtual photon contributions and spin-correlation effects fully taken into account. This process is an important background to weak boson scattering, to the measurement of quartic gauge couplings and to searches for signals of new physics beyond the Standard Model. As expected, the next-to-leading order corrections reduce significantly the scale uncertainty and show a non-trivial phase space dependence in kinematic distributions. Our code will be publicly available as part of the parton level Monte Carlo program VBFNLO.