NLO EW and QCD corrections to polarized ZZ production in the four-charged-lepton channel at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for calculating NLO electroweak and QCD corrections to polarized Z boson pair production at the LHC, enhancing the precision of Standard Model predictions for polarization measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pole approximation-based method for NLO polarized cross-section calculations, including electroweak corrections and gluon-induced processes.

Findings

Computed NLO EW and QCD corrections for polarized ZZ production.

First to include NLO EW corrections in this context.

Provides more accurate predictions for polarization measurements at the LHC.

Abstract

Measuring the polarization of electroweak bosons at the LHC allows for important tests of the electroweak-symmetry-breaking mechanism that is realized in nature. Therefore, precise Standard Model predictions are needed for the production of polarized bosons in the presence of realistic kinematic selections. We formulate a method for the calculation of polarized cross-sections at NLO that relies on the pole approximation and the separation of polarized matrix elements at the amplitude level. In this framework, we compute NLO-accurate cross-sections for the production of two polarized Z bosons at the LHC, including for the first time NLO EW corrections and combining them with NLO QCD corrections and contributions from the gluon-induced process.