Polarized-boson pairs at NLO in the SMEFT

TL;DR

This paper computes polarized WZ diboson production at the LHC within the SMEFT framework at NLO in QCD, enabling detailed polarization analyses and probing anomalous gauge couplings.

Contribution

It introduces a NLO QCD computation of polarized diboson production in SMEFT, including leptonic decays and helicity configurations, for the first time.

Findings

Allows polarization-specific analysis of diboson events

Incorporates dimension-six operators affecting gauge couplings

Provides a tool for SMEFT-based polarization and quantum tomography studies

Abstract

We present a computation of diboson production in the $W^\pm Z$ channel at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), incorporating leptonic decays of the gauge bosons and considering intermediate gauge bosons with definite polarization states. The analysis includes contributions from the Standard Model effective field theory (SMEFT) and is carried out at next-to-leading order accuracy in QCD, matched to a parton-shower simulation. Our implementation allows for the selection of specific helicity configurations, both in the Standard Model and in the presence of dimension-six operators inducing anomalous triple-gauge-boson couplings. This work provides a key ingredient for both polarization-template and quantum-tomography analyses of diboson systems at the LHC within the SMEFT framework.