NLO QCD corrections for W^+W^- pair production in association with two jets at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper computes the NLO QCD corrections to W^+W^-jj production at hadron colliders, including leptonic decays of the W bosons with full spin correlations. The calculation uses D-dimensional generalized unitarity for virtual corrections and Catani-Seymour subtraction for real emission, implemented in the MCFM framework, treating two key partonic channels with explicit color- and flavor structure. The results at Tevatron and LHC show moderate NLO corrections and significantly reduced scale uncertainties, with energy-dependent behavior and key kinematic distributions analyzed to support Higgs-search strategies. The study reinforces W^+W^-jj as an irreducible background to Higgs production in both gluon- and weak-boson-fusion channels and provides precise benchmarks for background normalization in Higgs searches.

Abstract

We compute the NLO QCD corrections to the pair production of W-bosons in association with two jets at the Tevatron and the LHC. This process is an important background to heavy Higgs-boson production in association with two jets, either in gluon or weak boson fusion. We consider leptonic decays of W-bosons and include all the spin correlations exactly. For natural choices of the renormalization scale, the NLO QCD corrections to pp(ppbar) -> W^+W^-jj are moderate but different for various values of the center-of-mass collision energy at the LHC and the Tevatron, emphasizing the need to compute them explicitly.

Figures (12)

• Figure 1: Primitive amplitudes a) $A_1(\bar{q}_1,q_2,g_3,g_4)$, b) $A_{1}(\bar{q}_1,g_3,q_2,g_4)$, c) $A_{1}(\bar{q}_1,g_3,g_4,q_2)$, and d) $A_{1}^{[1/2]}(\bar{q}_1,q_2,g_3,g_4)$. $W$ bosons are not shown.
• Figure 2: Amplitudes of $s$-type (left) and of $t$-type (right), for the partonic process $0 \to W^+W^- \bar{q}_1 q_2 \bar{q}_3 q_4$. The $W$-bosons are not shown.
• Figure 3: Sample tree-level diagrams for $B_0(\bar{u},u,\bar{c},c$). When both $W$-bosons couple directly to the quark line, the flavors of the quarks determine the ordering of the $W$-bosons.
• Figure 4: Sample tree-level diagram for $B_0(\bar{u},d,\bar{s},c$).
• Figure 5: Parent diagrams for one-loop primitive amplitudes $B_1^{(a,b,c,d)}$ for $0 \to (\bar{q}_1 q_2 \bar{q}_3 q_4) + W^+W^-$, where the flavors of the quarks are not specified. The $W$-bosons are not shown. Shaded areas represent dummy lines which are not cut.