Doubly-polarized WZ hadronic production at NLO QCD+EW: calculation method and further results
Le Duc Ninh, Julien Baglio, Thi Nhung Dao
Abstract
Abstract The doubly-polarized production of $$W^\pm Z$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>W</mml:mi> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> </mml:msup> <mml:mi>Z</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> pairs at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is presented at next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy both for the electroweak (EW) and QCD corrections, including a detailed description of the calculational method using the double-pole approximation. Numerical results at the 13 TeV LHC are presented in particular for the $$W^- Z$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>W</mml:mi> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> </mml:msup> <mml:mi>Z</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> case in the $$e^-\bar{\nu }_e \mu ^+\mu ^-$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>e</mml:mi> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> </mml:msup> <mml:msub> <mml:mover> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>ν</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>¯</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mover> <mml:mi>e</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>μ</mml:mi> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:msup> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>μ</mml:mi> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> channel using ATLAS fiducial cuts and for polarized distributions defined in the WZ center-of-mass system. The NLO EW corrections relative to the NLO QCD predictions are found to be smaller than 5% in most kinematic distributions, but can reach the level of 10% in some distributions such as lepton transverse momentum distributions or rapidity separation between the electron and the Z boson. EW corrections are not uniform for different polarizations. A comparison between the new ATLAS measurement of polarization fractions to our theoretical prediction is presented.