The Role of Vector Boson Fusion in the Production of Heavy Vector Triplets at the LHC and HL-LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the significance of vector boson fusion (VBF) in producing heavy vector triplets at the LHC and HL-LHC, revealing its increasing importance at higher masses and its interplay with Drell-Yan processes.

Contribution

It clarifies the role of VBF in heavy vector triplet production, highlighting its dominance over Drell-Yan at masses above 1 TeV and proposing benchmark points for VBF searches.

Findings

VBF production becomes dominant above 1 TeV for certain parameters.

VBF leads to an unavoidable Drell-Yan production rate.

Two benchmark points are identified for VBF searches.

Abstract

We clarify the role of vector boson fusion (VBF) in the production of heavy vector triplets at the LHC and the HL-LHC. We point out that the presence of VBF production leads to an unavoidable rate of Drell-Yan (DY) production and highlight the subtle interplay between the falling parton luminosities and the increasing importance of VBF production as the heavy vector mass increases. We discuss current LHC searches and HL-LHC projections in di-boson and di-lepton final states and demonstrate that VBF production outperforms DY production for resonance masses above 1 TeV in certain regions of the parameter space. We define two benchmark parameter points which provide competitive production rates in vector boson fusion.