Electroweak-QCD interference in hadronic vector bosons at LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the interference effects between electroweak and QCD processes in hadronic vector boson decays at the LHC, revealing that these effects can cause small but potentially significant shifts in reconstructed mass peaks depending on kinematics.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed study of electroweak-QCD interference effects on boosted W and Z bosons at the LHC using the Sherpa simulation package.

Findings

Interference can shift peak positions by several GeV/c^2.

Effects are negligible at high transverse momenta but may be significant at lower momenta.

Kinematic dependence strongly influences the impact of interference effects.

Abstract

The analysis of hadronic vector boson decays at LHC does not normally allow for interference with QCD production. These effects are studied here using the Sherpa package and can move by several GeV/c 2 the peak positions experiments would reconstruct. However, their impact depends strongly on the kinematics involved. The shifts expected in boosted W and Z bosons, which have been the subject of experimental study, are explored for the first time. The effects in the channels examined are all very small or negligible, but this may not true if lower transverse momenta are analysed, for example in the experimental trigger systems.