Higher-order soft and virtual corrections in $p p \to \gamma W$ production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper calculates advanced QCD corrections up to N$^3$LO for photon-W boson production at the LHC, significantly improving the precision of theoretical predictions for this process.

Contribution

It presents the first complete N$^3$LO soft-gluon correction calculation for $ ext{pp} o ext{γ}W$ in single-particle-inclusive kinematics, enhancing theoretical accuracy.

Findings

Higher-order corrections significantly increase the cross section.

First N$^3$LO soft-gluon correction calculation for this process.

Improved theoretical predictions for photon-W production at the LHC.

Abstract

We study higher-order QCD corrections beyond NLO for the associated production of a photon with a $W$ boson ($\gamma W^+$ and $\gamma W^-$ production) at the Large Hadron Collider. We calculate the NNLO soft-plus-virtual QCD corrections as well as the N$^3$LO soft-gluon corrections to the total production cross section and the photon transverse-momentum distribution in single-particle-inclusive kinematics. The higher-order corrections provide a significant enhancement to the cross section. This is the first calculation of the complete soft-gluon corrections at N$^3$LO in single-particle-inclusive kinematics for a Standard Model process.