1. $W^+W^-$ production at hadron colliders in NNLO QCD
- Author
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Gehrmann, T., Grazzini, M., Kallweit, S., Maierhöfer, P., von Manteuffel, A., Pozzorini, S., Rathlev, D., and Tancredi, L.
- Subjects
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology ,High Energy Physics - Experiment - Abstract
Charged gauge boson pair production at the Large Hadron Collider allows detailed probes of the fundamental structure of electroweak interactions. We present precise theoretical predictions for on-shell $W^+W^-$ production that include, for the first time, QCD effects up to next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbation theory. As compared to next-to-leading order, the inclusive $W^+W^-$ cross section is enhanced by 9% at 7 TeV and 12% at 14 TeV. The residual perturbative uncertainty is at the 3% level. The severe contamination of the $W^+W^-$ cross section due to top-quark resonances is discussed in detail. Comparing different definitions of top-free $W^+W^-$ production in the four and five flavour number schemes, we demonstrate that top-quark resonances can be separated from the inclusive $W^+W^-$ cross section without significant loss of theoretical precision., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures
- Published
- 2014
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