Mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to W-boson production in hadron collisions

TL;DR

This paper calculates the combined quantum chromodynamics and electroweak corrections to W-boson production in hadron collisions, providing precise theoretical predictions for cross sections and distributions relevant to collider experiments.

Contribution

It introduces an analytic computation of two-loop virtual corrections and an optimized subtraction scheme for mixed QCD-electroweak effects in W production.

Findings

Mixed corrections significantly affect the fiducial cross section.

Analytic two-loop virtual corrections are obtained for arbitrary gauge boson masses.

Numerical results demonstrate the impact on key kinematic distributions.

Abstract

We compute mixed QCD-electroweak corrections to the fully-differential production of an on-shell $W$ boson. Decays of $W$ bosons to lepton pairs are included in the leading order approximation. The required two-loop virtual corrections are computed analytically for arbitrary values of the electroweak gauge boson masses. Analytic results for integrated subtraction terms are obtained within a soft-collinear subtraction scheme optimized to accommodate the structural simplicity of infra-red singularities of mixed QCD-electroweak contributions. Numerical results for mixed corrections to the fiducial cross section of $pp \to W^+ \to l^+ \nu$ and selected kinematic distributions in this process are presented.