Fully differential NNLO computations with MATRIX

TL;DR

The paper introduces MATRIX, a computational framework for precise NNLO QCD calculations of various hadron collider processes involving Higgs and vector bosons, including leptonic decays and off-shell effects.

Contribution

MATRIX is the first framework to include all leptonic decay channels with off-shell effects and to control systematic uncertainties at the permille level in NNLO calculations.

Findings

Provides reference predictions for cross sections with uncertainties.

Includes all leptonic decay channels and off-shell effects.

Controls systematic uncertainties at the permille level.

Abstract

We present the computational framework MATRIX which allows us to evaluate fully differential cross sections for a wide class of processes at hadron colliders in next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD. The processes we consider are $2\to 1$ and $2\to 2$ hadronic reactions involving Higgs and vector bosons in the final state. All possible leptonic decay channels of the vector bosons are included for the first time in the calculations, by consistently accounting for all resonant and non-resonant diagrams, off-shell effects and spin correlations. We briefly introduce the theoretical framework MATRIX is based on, discuss its relevant features and provide a detailed description of how to use MATRIX to obtain NNLO accurate results for the various processes. We report reference predictions for inclusive and fiducial cross sections of all the physics processes considered here and discuss their corresponding uncertainties. MATRIX features an automatic extrapolation procedure that allows us, for the first time, to control the systematic uncertainties inherent to the applied NNLO subtraction procedure down to the few permille level (or better).