NLO QCD corrections for off-shell $t\bar{t}b\bar{b}$

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive next-to-leading order QCD calculation for off-shell top-antitop-bottom-antibottom production at the LHC, including comparisons to previous work and experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a full off-shell NLO QCD calculation for $pp ightarrow e^+ u_e b \mu^- ar{ u}_\mu ar{b} b ar{b}$ using HELAC-NLO, with new insights into initial state contributions and $b$-jet tagging schemes.

Findings

Results agree with experimental measurements.

Initial state $b$-quark contributions are significant.

Two $b$-jet tagging schemes are proposed.

Abstract

We present a full off-shell NLO QCD calculation of $pp \rightarrow e^+ \nu_e b \mu^- \bar{\nu}_\mu \bar{b} b \bar{b} + X$. Results are obtained using the HELAC-NLO Monte Carlo framework. We discuss a comparison to previous results and to experimental measurements. We also investigate the contribution of the initial states involving $b$-quarks and we introduce two $b$-jet tagging schemes.