WZ production in association with two jets at NLO in QCD

TL;DR

The results show that the next-to-leading order corrections reduce significantly the scale uncertainties and have a nontrivial phase space dependence.

Abstract

We report on the calculation of $W^\pm Zjj$ production with leptonic decays at hadron-hadron colliders at next-to-leading order in QCD. These processes are important both to test the quartic gauge couplings of the Standard Model and because they constitute relevant backgrounds to beyond standard model physics searches. Our results show that the next-to-leading order corrections reduce significantly the scale uncertainties and have a non-trivial phase space dependence.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Representative tree-level Feynman diagrams.
• Figure 2: Selected Feynman diagrams contributing to the virtual amplitudes.
• Figure 3: Scale dependence of the LO and NLO cross sections at the LHC. The curves with and without stars are for $W^-Zjj$ and $W^+Zjj$ productions, respectively.
• Figure 4: Differential cross sections and K factors for the transverse momenta (top) and the invariant mass (bottom) of the two hardest jets. The bands describe $\mu_0/2 \le \mu_F=\mu_R\le 2\mu_0$ variations. The $K$-factor bands are due to the scale variations of the NLO results, with respect to $\sigma_\text{LO}(\mu_0)$. The curves with stars in the lower panels are for the central scale, while the two solid lines correspond to $\mu_F = \mu_R=2\mu_0$ and $\mu_0/2$.
• Figure 5: Similar to Fig. \ref{['fig:dist_jet']} but for the transverse mass of the two gauge bosons $m_{T,WZ}$.