NLO QCD corrections to WZ+jet production with leptonic decays

TL;DR

This work delivers NLO QCD predictions for WZ+jet production with leptonic decays at the Tevatron and LHC, including off-shell effects and two independent computational implementations for cross-checks. The authors show that NLO corrections are substantial and vary across phase space, with significant differences between inclusive and jet-vetoed (exclusive) scenarios. They demonstrate careful treatment of IR divergences via dipole subtraction and assess the impact of jet vetoes on perturbative stability, cautioning against over-interpreting exclusive results in high-$p_T$ regions. Overall, the results are essential for precise SM background modeling in di-boson plus jet channels at hadron colliders.

Abstract

We compute the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to WZ+jet production at the Tevatron and the LHC, including decays of the electroweak bosons to light leptons with all off-shell effects taken into account. The corrections are sizable and have significant impact on the differential distributions.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: Representative Feynman graph contributing to $p\bar{p}, pp \rightarrow \bar{\nu}_e e^-\mu^+\mu^-+\mathrm{X}$. The crosses mark points where the $\gamma,Z\rightarrow\mu^+\mu^-$ decay topology can be inserted. Indicated is also the exchange of a virtual gluon, which gives rise to self-energy, triangle, box, and pentagon topologies. Not shown are topologies that result from closed fermion loops, non-abelian graphs, and real emission topologies. All other subprocesses can be recovered from the shown graph by flavour summation and/or crossing.
• Figure 2: Fixed-scale variation of $\mu_{\rm{R}}=\mu_{\rm{F}}=\mu$ for on-shell W$^\pm$Z+jet production at the Tevatron.
• Figure 3: Scale variation for on-shell W$^+$Z+jet (upper plots) and W$^-$Z+jet (lower plots) production at the LHC. The identified renormalization and factorization scales $\mu_{\rm{R}}=\mu_{\rm{F}}=\mu$ are varied with respect to the fixed scale $M_{\mathrm{W}}$, the maximum $p_{\mathrm{T,jet}}$, and the invariant mass $m_{\rm{WZ}}$. The plots on the left show cross sections at LO, those on the right at NLO QCD accuracy.
• Figure 4: LO, NLO-inclusive and NLO-exclusive differential distributions of the transverse momentum of the hardest jet and its pseudorapidity for W$^+$Z+jet production including leptonic decays. The differential $K$-factor band corresponds to varying $\mu_{\rm{R}}=\mu_{\rm{F}}$ by a factor two around the central scale in the NLO distribution only.
• Figure 5: LO, NLO-inclusive and NLO-exclusive differential distributions of the maximum and minimum lepton transverse momentum for W$^-$Z+jet production. The differential $K$-factor band corresponds to varying $\mu_{\rm{R}}=\mu_{\rm{F}}$ by a factor two around the central scale in the NLO distribution only.