PRECISION PREDICTIONS AND TOOLS FOR WEAK BOSON PRODUCTION AT THE LHC.

Precision studies of weak boson production at the LHC require that electroweak and QCD higher-order corrections are simultaneously taken into account in data analysis. After a review of the present status of higher-order calculations for single W and Z boson production at hadron colliders, we present some preliminary results on the combination of electroweak and QCD corrections to a sample of observables of the process pp → W ± → µ ± + X at the LHC. Our phenomenological analysis shows that a high-precision knowledge of QCD and a careful combination of electroweak and strong contributions is mandatory in view of the anticipated experimental accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]