Polarization observables in WZ production at the 13 TeV LHC: Inclusive case

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the polarization observables of W and Z bosons in WZ production at 13 TeV LHC, including full NLO QCD and electroweak corrections, revealing large charge asymmetries sensitive to higher-order effects.

Contribution

It provides a detailed NLO calculation of polarization observables in WZ production, incorporating electroweak corrections and defining new charge asymmetries.

Findings

Large charge asymmetries sensitive to higher-order effects.

Polarization observables depend on inclusive di-muon mass cuts.

Electroweak corrections significantly impact polarization measurements.

Abstract

We present a study of the polarization observables of the $W$ and $Z$ bosons in the process $p p \to W^\pm Z\to e^\pm \nu_e \mu^+\mu^-$ at the 13 TeV Large Hadron Collider. The calculation is performed at next-to-leading order, including the full QCD corrections as well as the electroweak corrections, the latter being calculated in the double-pole approximation. The results are presented in the helicity coordinate system adopted by ATLAS and for different inclusive cuts on the di-muon invariant mass. We define left-right charge asymmetries related to the polarization fractions between the $W^+ Z$ and $W^- Z$ channels and we find that these asymmetries are large and sensitive to higher-order effects. Similar findings are also presented for charge asymmetries related to a P-even angular coefficient.