NNLO QCD corrections to production of a spin-2 particle with non-universal couplings in the DY process

TL;DR

This paper calculates NNLO QCD corrections to the production of a spin-2 particle with non-universal couplings in the Drell-Yan process, improving prediction stability and highlighting significant higher-order effects for collider searches.

Contribution

It provides the first NNLO QCD correction calculation for spin-2 particles with non-universal couplings, considering non-conserved operators and their impact on collider phenomenology.

Findings

Higher order corrections stabilize theoretical predictions.

Corrections are significant and must be included in collider analyses.

Ultraviolet behaviour varies with non-conserved operators.

Abstract

We study the phenomenological impact of the interaction of spin-2 fields with those of the Standard Model in a model independent framework up to next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics. We use the invariant mass distribution of the pair of leptons produced at the LHC to demonstrate this. A minimal scenario where the spin-2 fields couple to two gauge invariant operators with different coupling strengths has been considered. These operators being not conserved show very different ultraviolet behaviour increasing the searches options of spin-2 particles at the colliders. We find that our results using the higher order quantum corrections stabilise the predictions with respect to renormalisation and factorisation scales. We also find that corrections are appreciable which need to be taken into account in such searches at the colliders.